a new understanding of today, time and space.

we have to understand that matter cannot be destroyed…
the amount of mass in a closed system must remain the same…
so we can convert matter into something else but the total
amount of mass in that closed system will remain the same…
so we can convert matter into energy and the result will leave
us the same amount of mass in our system……

the next thing is that the matter that exists in our body
has existed since the beginning of time, since the big bang…
it has been converted endless number of times from matter
into energy and back again… this has been going on since the
big bang… so any given cell in my body has existed since the big bang…
I am eternal… for the cells in my body has existed since and will
continue to exist from the beginning of time to the end of time…

and you too have existed since the beginning of time and will continue
to the end of time… as each of your cells has existed since the beginning
of time…… as there is only so much matter in the universe, it is logical to
understand that our individual cells has combined again and again and again…
in the 14 billion years of the universe existence, our individual cells have
combined into various objects, tree’s, grass, stars, planets, animals,
amoeba…… our individual cells have been friends, neighbors, lovers,
enemies and at times, piles of shit…………

we are transient, accidental collection of cells that
has been formed and reformed billions of times over the last
14 billion years and we will continue to be formed and reformed
over the upcoming years, until one day, billions of years from now,
time ends… and the process of our atoms, our cells can no longer
be exchanged from one to another…the process of matter and energy
can no longer be exchanged…………

This is why we cannot longer hold that most dangerous
of thoughts, the most dangerous idea that man has ever had…
the belief, the wrong belief that there is an US versus THEM…
we can no longer this false and phony idea that there is some
validity to the notion that there is an US and that there is a THEM…

every single aspect of modern life is full of US versus THEM…
we have sports and economics and political and social themes
full of US versus THEM…….there is no such thing as US verses THEM…

as our cells have over the billions of years been exchanged and interchanged
between each other, how can their be an US versus THEM when
the reality is that there is only US…… we are connected
to everything because we can be exchanged on a cellular level
to everything… we can eat meat and process fruits because
we are simple converting those cells into our cells and at some point
in time, our cells as matter can become animals and fruits and tree’s and…

there is no difference between any object and any other object because
we can at become or exchanged our matter into any other object…
remember matter cannot be destroyed, it can only be converted
and our cells have been converted into millions of other objects
and will continue to be converted into millions of other objects
for more billions of years…… there is not such thing as an US versus THEM…
for we are one… we simply hold different forms today… tomorrow we
will hold different forms, our matter, our cells, our atoms will be
exchanged into some other form, maybe a tree or a dog or a star?
who knows? I for one don’t know……

so in the midst of all this constant and continually exchanged
of atoms that has lasted since the beginning of time and will continue
to last until the end of time, how can we say, US versus THEM?

that US versus THEM is constantly changing…… we are creatures that
exist within time and time is one continuous, ever changing process of
cells and atoms being converted into something else…….matter and energy
cannot be destroyed, just converted……so how do you get US versus THEM in
light of the fact that matter and energy cannot be destroyed?

Kropotkin

so in light of my above post about US versus THEM, how can we
have or even think about Sittlichkeit, the ethical life?

If we understand that we are ever changing and transient
beings, here today as humans, there tomorrow as a dog or
grass or another person or a pile of shit? who knows what
we will be converted to next, what our individual cells, our individual
atoms will become next, then how do we hold to the ethical life?

If we understand that there is no THEM, there is no other, there is simply
other objects that hold cells and atoms that we have been a part of
and have converted over the billions of years and they have converted
and been part of us… there is only US……matter that has been converted
billions of times and will continue to be converted billions of times before
it is all over (and we will be there at the end as individual atoms and cells)

if there is only US, then we must engage in Sittlichkeit, the ethical life
as if we treat matter, all matter as US… to be ethical means we
are simply treating ourselves as best we can… for there is no other,
no object that is separate or apart from us for we can be exchanged for
any and all other objects in the universe, our separate and individual cells and atoms…

there can only be US…so let us treat all atoms with honesty and respect
for we are part of and they are part of……. US…….

for the old man who smells and the cute young girl and the dog who bit us,
and the tree’s and the grass and the sky… we are all interchangeable…
and that atom interchangeability means there is no other, there is no THEM…
there is simply US… The dimwit who supports IQ45 is also part of me, part
of US…for we are interchangeable in the fact their cells and atoms can
change and be part of me and I can be a part of them……

so anyone who supports an US versus THEM mentality is simply
ignorant of what we really are… simply transient beings who happen
to hold this particular form today, maybe tomorrow we split up our
cells and atoms and become something else… the atoms in my arms
dissolve into base atoms and then get integrated into some other collection
of atoms becoming something else…… and the cycle goes on forever…

how can there be an US versus THEM when we are so interchangeable?

Kropotkin

limited time today…

The best way to describe and understand reality, especially our reality,
is to understand existence as being transient, accidental…

which in large part why people are so insistent on looking
for certainty in existence…

we want certainty because our lives are so transient……
here today, gone tomorrow… could be the motto of life and the
motto of human existence…

so much of our live is not only transient but accidental…
my existence was fundamentally changed with the loss of my
hearing and it was an accident as so much of our lives is accidental…
we are born on one side of a line and we are called Americans,
born on another side of an imaginary line and we are called Mexicans,
born on one side of an imaginary line and you are French and on the other
side of the line, you could be German or Dutch or Italian… again depending
on which side of a line you can’t even see………accidents of birth determine
what nationality you are or what is the color of your hair or if you are handicap…

we must understand this very basic nature of existence which is its transient
and accidental……….

so this search for certainty is a search for something that in human existence
is not possible… the very essence of human existence is transient… both in
form, bodies and in spirit which is our laws, government, philosophy, history,
economics… we see these things of ism’s and ideologies and biases and
superstitions of being not transient… for example, we see the ism of
democracy as being permanent, but it isn’t… it too is just as transient
and as accidental as we are…

we cannot seek our understanding of the universe, of reality as being
stable, fixed, certain… for the universe and reality is accidental
and transient…… today, the ocean is a certain color… in the past, our ocean
was different colors because it had different elements in it… and the moon,
at one time, the moon was far closer to earth then it is today… the physical
nature of our reality today is different because of the transient nature
of physical reality…

we see forces like gravity as being fixed and stable and ever present,
but even forces like gravity, so called laws change and flex depending
on the situation…even gravity is not absolute… it too is accidental
and transient…will gravity exists the same as it did in the beginning, during
the big bang and will gravity be the same at the end of time… no,
the so called fixed forces like gravity and electricalomagnatism will
change over the years……… it might be why the universe will end because
the four forces, the four laws of existence will change over the many of billions
of years……

even the universe is accidental and transient… if it is born, it will die…
just not today and not for billions of years, but yes, at some point, even
the universe must end…and that is the interesting part… the length
of time that an object gets is accidental… we humans get roughly 70 years,
some tree’s might get 500 years, some flies last for hours and the planet
might get a billion years and the solar system might get 9 billion years…
we never know how much time, how transient matter is…… but matter
is transient…we know this, the only question is how long does that matter
exist for…not if it will last forever…………

that is the basic fact we must learn to come to grips with,
that we exist in and we ourselves are transient, accidental…….

begin your understanding of reality, of the universe there…

Kropotkin

if it is matter, it is transient…

Kropotkin

[quote=“Peter Kropotkin”]
if it is matter, it is transient…"

But Kropotkin, didn’t you aready say that we have existed since
the begining of time as atoms? and that we shall continue to exist
until the end of time… why yes, yes I did… so what about this
contradiction?

it is a contradiction only if you don’t understand that as forms, and
everything you see is a form, people, dogs, tree’s, cats, the sun,
galaxies are all matter that has form… the forms are transient,
but the underlying matter, the atoms, are forever… so our forms
come and go at a rather rapid pace, but the atoms that make up
those forms exists forever…and so we are transient because the
forms that make up our bodies is transient…

think of it like clay… from clay we can make a wide variety of forms
the forms made by the clay are almost countless but and this is the important
part, the clay still remains… the atoms still remain… just the forms
created by the atoms are transient…

this is the begining of modern philosophy… not the idea of
movement which has dominated philosophy since Newton
created his physics and for the next 200 years motion dominated
philosophy…

Kropotkin

here we touch upon the old themes of ours…

What is the value of ART?

I believe that ART is a listing of human possibilities…
through ART we see what are the possibilities for us…
we can be smart or funny or embrace numerous emotional
possibilities that exists in ART………we can love and be loved
and be accepted or rejected and be brave or cowardly… in
fact the possibilities in ART are far too numerous to even
be mentioned…

But today in the year 2019, we see ART differently…
for some, some… ART is about the human possibilities…
but for some, ART no longer presents what is possibile for us…
we have become indifferent to the possibilities that ART gives us…

the value of ART has been present and noted for centuries…
it is an means to escape and to titlate and to educate and
to advance answers to what it means to be human…

But ART itself suffers from the same problem that all matter
has and that is ART is transient…the most famous painting
in the world is most likely the MONA LISA… and perhaps, perhaps
in a few years the MONA LISA will no longer exist because of age…
and entropy… and recall the ART of the Greeks and Roman which
has dissappeared because of passing of centuries…

now one might say, we still have the ART of the Greeks and Roman in
their plays and buildings and poems… but what that ART means to
the Greeks and Romans is very different then what it means to us…
The play “Antigone” by Sophocles means something different to
the Greeks then it does to us… just as democracy meant something
different to the Greeks and Romans then it does to us……

but upon reflection, perhaps ART as we know it, is an attempt to
understand our transient and accidental nature……. in the play “Antigone”
by the end, everyone is dead except the “villain” Creon……

the very nature of the play is focused upon our transient nature…

we live and we die and in the end, we hope it meant something…

does it?

Kropotkin

I was looking for a book, I have 5000 books scattered over
two closets and two bookcases in the living room…
and in looking in the hallway closet, I found an old notebook of mine…
not that unusual, as I have probably 100 notebooks of old writings
around here somewhere…as I knocked the notebook unto the ground
and in picking it up, I began to read its pages……. the notebook isn’t dated
and I almost never date them… I began to read and I found I recognized the
words intellectually as being concerns of mine at one point in time, but
I didn’t feel any emotional connection to the words… they were empty words
on a page… a slice in time of who I was at that time… and quite often
that is ART… a slice in time of where the author/painter/sculptors do their
work… ART is just a moment in time in the artists life…
I can intellectually tell you about that time in my life but I can’t
emotionally tell you…I have changed, evolved into someone else…
I am old now and I hold thoughts of an old person…just as I cannot
connect to the Plays or philosophy of the Greeks or Romans…
their ART is an instant in time, a moment taken…….
and my, to loosely use the term, my ART is also a moment in time,
a slice of who I am at the moment of creation… try reading
Dickens… Charles Dickens was the most popular writer of
the 19th century… He captured a moment in time for the Victorians
and he understood what their inner quest was… We don’t have
an artist working in any medium today who speaks to our 21st century
sensibilities and needs like Dickens spoke to the Victorian age……

we are much more fractured in our understanding, our sensibilities,
in our needs of the world then the 19 century was…….

once again, we are faced with the issue of reuniting our fractured souls…
how do we begin to cure our alienation, our disconnect from ourselves, from
our society, from the ism’s and ideologies that once so formed who we were in
our childhood indoctrinations……

How do we begin the process of becoming Catholic, which of course means
universal… how do we become universal? how am I suppose to connect to
you and to society and those ism’s and childhood indoctrinations?

first of all, we must escape our romantic past that still holds
America hostage… the romance of rugged individualism, of
rages to riches stories, IQ45 is still held hostage by phony romantic
notions that prevent him from growing as a human being and as he is
held hostage, millions of Americas are also held hostage by the
demonstrably wrong ism’s and ideologies of the right wing…

wrong as they are leftovers beliefs from the Romantic era that existed
in Europe from the French revolution to World War One…read the
manifestos and writings from after the French revolution and you will
see how conservatives have based their entire prejudice on the old
romantic era…read the conservatives and the Romantics side by side
and you will see how the conservative movement is the romantic
movement carried to today…we cannot overcome 21st century
issues and problems with 19 century solutions derived from the Romantics
writers…

one question asked is, is Marx writing also based on Romantic notions?
why yes, that is why his solutions are in dire need of being corrected
and modernized…which leads us to where we understand that
the questions and answers we have in the 21st century are not questions
or answers from the 21st century, the questions and answers we do have
are from the Romantic era, from the 19th century and that is we have
floundered in our times because we are not asking or understanding
21st century questions and answers with 21st century answers or questions…
we are grappling in the 21st century with 19 century questions and answers…

we must update our questions and answers with 21st century questions
and answers…

In one month, exactly, I shall turn 60… I cannot ask the right questions or find
the right answers if I find myself with questions and answers based on when I was 25 or 40…
I must ask and answer with an age appropriate questions and answers… my
25 year old self and my 60 year old self has nothing in common outside of
a body that has been battered and beaten over the years…

I must question and answer myself with questions and answers needed of a 60 year
old… and we must question and answer ourselves with 21st century questions and
answers…

Kropotkin

talking with my mom… I could/should write a book titled
“talking with my mom” anyway, talking to my mom and she
was talking about my siblings, 3 sisters and one brother…
and how each was different as a child…my older sister wanted
to be in charge and my younger sister was always running away from
home, she never got past the end of the driveway in all those attempts
at running away and my brother was always and still is, by the way,
involved in his “thing”… he never paid much attention to anything that
wasn’t his current passion… as for me, my mom says, everyday when I was
4 or 5, I would come home from school, once inside the house, I would
sit on the bottom of the stairs and shake my head, saying, “I didn’t learn to
read today” and repeating that, “I didn’t learn to read today”……
even as a very young child, I had a passion to learn,
to understand, to know things…

today, the only difference between me now and me then is this, today
I sit at my computer and say, “I didn’t learn what it means to be human today”
and in various ways, I would repeat myself… I haven’t change much…

my mom says that she would distract me by taking me into the kitchen
and having a bowl of Ice cream… I think that is what I shall do right now…
then and now, my favorite ice cream is Vanilla ice cream…
I may not have found out what it means to be a human being, but
I am at least consistently… boring…

Kropotkin

I had a whole set piece of thought I was going to
lay down this morning…I was going to connect the Romantic
viewpoint of individualism and nationalism with the failed thoughts
of Hitler and IQ45 and conservatism… and as part of my argument,
I was going to use my friends at Wiki article on “Romanticism”…

well, this morning I started to read Jacques Barzun book, “Classic,
Romantic and Modern” and my whole plan went to hell in a handbasket…
I don’t know where I will end after finishing this book, but already, I see
part of the “Modern” problem comes from the fact that we “Modern”
are so alienated and disconnected from each other and from society because
of the “fact” that we “Moderns” don’t have or we haven’t publicly set
out our problem to be solved… every generation has a problem to be solved,
that is what defines a generation, the question every generation must answer,
and our generation hasn’t yet understood what is our questioned to be solved,
what is our problem to be solved?

Kropotkin

the question of philosophy and of science and history is this,
what is the question/questions to be solved?

Theology doesn’t have questions, theology has answers and that is
the failure of theology…….

The ancient Greeks thought the question was the search for wisdom…
in which they thought that truth/wisdom was beauty… the truthful was
the beautiful… which is why Socrates was such a revaluation, he was
truth but he wasn’t beautiful…that was part of the mystery of Socrates…
for the Greeks, the ultimate prize or final purpose of philosophy was
to sit in contemplation of god…(the greeks took for granted the existence of god/gods)
and the proper role of man was to sit in contemplation of said god/gods in heaven…
and the Christians took over this idea…….

so for the next thousand years, the goal was to get to heaven so one could
sit in contemplation of god…

Then came the rebirth, the Renaissance where the question of this contemplation
wasn’t question and then came the science and the philosophers, Galileo as science
and Descartes as philosopher…but the goal of the contemplation of god remained…

then came Kant who shifted the question for the first time in over 2000 years…
for Kant the question was about self determination…Sepere Aude… dare to know…
dare to think for yourself………

This new question, this new statement… how are we to become
self determining creatures…how do we become free from the authorities
that have determined for us, the bible, god, Aristotle, the church, the state…
are all authorities… how do we begin this search for self determination…

that was the new mission statement of philosophers… how are we to become
self determined? Then shortly after Kant came Hegel and Hegel great
contribution was to discover history and its influence on philosophy
and philosophical concepts…the concept of freedom is not rooted
as an ahistorical concept… the concept of freedom has a history
and Hegel’s book the “Phenomenology” is a history of freedom…
today we wouldn’t think of a concept without some understanding
of that concepts history and that was because of Hegel…

but it is time for another mission statement for philosophy
and philosophers…and Marx should us the way…

He said, “it is not enough to understand the world, we must
change the world” but here we use the lessons of history…

we must contemplate concepts and their history, yes…
but then we must use that understanding to create
a goal for us as individuals, as a society, as a culture,
as a people to reach for and eventually as a species…

we must no longer isolate ourselves as individuals or in small groups
or even as a state or some accidental trait like being white or being
an American… we must think of ourselves writ large…which means
we are part of an ever larger group of people… we can no longer think
of ourselves as just part of a family or of being an Californian or being
an American or being white or handicap or whatever accidental trait
we have……

we exist as and are part of the whole… I am Kropotkin… I am not just
white or male or handicap or an American, I am part of something
bigger… I am part of the human species and I am part of life…
and then we must create a meaningful goal that incorporates
who we are as human beings and as part of life…

I am part of life as part of life I must engage in life as a partner,
not as someone who waste resources just to keep my fat ass in comfort…
I must recognize that being human is not the end of the story but the beginning
and we must act as if we are part of the earth, not in charge of the earth…
to fight to save nature is the fight to save ourselves… if we preserve the
forest and trees and the sea, we are preserving us for we are part of the
forest and trees and the sea……

we must have an reevaluation of what is our place on earth and within
that reevaluation, we must come to an understanding of the proper
place of human beings within the context of the earth and all its
diversity…we are part of that diversity and we are part of earth
and we exist as part of, not in charge of, but part of life…….

we must expand our understanding of what it means to be human to
include our place on earth and within life…….and as we begin to
understand, we can begin to change how we think about resources
and their use and in our case, their misuse…human beings tend to
think that the universe is about them and we must learn that the universe
isn’t about us or us being human…

it is about life and we are just a part of life and not even the most important
part of life…………reevaluate your values and include becoming part of life…

lose your ego and learn to join a greater cause then human beings, the cause
of life……

and then we can become the catalyst of change that places human beings into
their proper context, as part of life and only a part of life…

Kropotkin

praise to the lotus eaters…

for they ever exist in another room in the house of man……

we, we moderns are so consumed with the practical details of life that
we sometimes forget to simply be… and thus we praise the lotus eaters…
for they are another side of the human experience…

Kropotkin

your second to last post was very touching, krackpotkin, and not badly done. the lotus eaters one was good too, i’m pretty sure. but what is this thread, anyway? one of those open journals like d63’s got over in the sandbox? well if it is, I HEAR YOU, BROTHER. i hear you loud and clear. and i might be the only one with the exception of serendipper. i don’t know if you get around these threads, but the big dipper’s got a good handle on things. the rest couldn’t care less; you might as well be talking to that produce cart you push around at the grocery store all day.

speaking of grocery stores, i actually replied to one of your monologues about that a while back over at my failed forum. i can’t find it now, but in it i suggested that you quit your job, sell everything you own except for your backpack, and become an expat over in southeast asia somewhere. this life you live now… stocking shelves for 10 bucks an hour all day and then pouring your heart out in a few posts that nobody here cares about, well… that’s no way to live, man.

and don’t you go worrying about ‘spreading the marxism’ . marx is alive and well (recall that he had no last words; last words are for fools who haven’t said enough) and coming to a planet near you. let the pros handle that… you just worry about getting the fuck out of that job and onto a beach somewhere where you can listen to michael bolton in peace. and don’t tell me you don’t like michael bolton. they play it all day at the grocery store. by now you should know every one of his songs by heart.

found it!

this is not unlike the myth of sisyphus, except instead of pushing a boulder up a hill, you’re pushing del monte green bean cans across a scanner only to have them roll back on you. but to answer your concluding question; no, you don’t have to wait. what you need to do is something outrageous, because if you’ve got nothing to lose, you’ve got nothing to lose by doing something outrageous. you need adventure, unfamiliar places and people, a complete change of environment. i say sell your house and everything in it, research foreign country currency exchange rates and travel abroad. but don’t go to stockholm because nobody goes to sweden. you need a cheap country where you can turn your stacks into bigger stacks, maybe buy some citizenship and/or property, and spend all day in coffee shops and overcrowded buses touring cities, ruins, ancient cities, ancient ruins, and ruined cities where you can talk to the city’s ancients. but don’t ruin it for them… nothing’s more cantankerous and depraved than ruined ancients. most of them don’t even know america exists. don’t tell them it does. you’ll find other expats just like you who once worked in the produce section of some grocery store and were finally like ‘fuck this’. i’m not kidding man, try it. what’s the worst that could happen? typhus, maybe, but unlikely if you’re careful. and watch out for pick-pockets. south-east asians have it down to a science.

somebody please tell kropotkin to read this. i know some of you sonsabitches snooping around here are from ILP… so be a good sport and tell him for me. kropotkin needs our help. look at the guy. he’s a mess.

  1. been there done that. Alas, the soul grows weary of every and any situation and soon the grass back home tolls another country walk in those ol familiar places, be it a distorted visage of a reactionary fluke,
    there ain’t Norton’s like home, always return even of a known current nostalgic delirium. Plus K has family and he is responsible for them and tjeuay not.share his
    wanderlust.

May be, I’m all off. If he had portfolio like those post war west bank settlers , with more then a knack for personal impressions, or any channelled expression . THERE, he may be in for an incontrovertible regret.

What say?

how do we infuse our actions with meaning?

in the past, we have connected our actions with giving
glory to god thus creating meaning for our actions…

but how does modern man create meaning with our actions?

I go to the store and buy groceries… and the meaning of that actions is……
I am feeding myself and my family… that is the meaning of going to the store…

I work 5 days of the week, roughly 32 hours, (because of my back issues, I can’t work
any more hours during the week) and I have been working for over 40 years, since
I was 17… and what is the meaning of all this work? I get money from which
I pay my bills… but in reality, think about it……is there any meaning to
working for 40 years? none that I can see… it is an pointless exercise that
has no meaning outside of putting food on my table…but this is the failure
of modern man… we can only think in terms of being practical… we can no
longer think in any other terms… if making money is the point of my existence,
there is no point to my existence… there is no meaning if I spend my existence
trying to make and/or spend money…how do I create meaning in my life
without any reference to theology or biology?

we can create meaning by creating a goal in which we can achieve
our goals individually and collectively…a goal creates meaning and
purpose in our lives… but the goal must have some value that is
above or beyond just materalistic or monetary value…
for we must begin to understand that our current ideology
of materalism has failed with destructive results on planet earth…
and how can we tell if the ideology of materialism has failed?

we can see the results in the empty and pointless days of our lives…
we work and then we work some more… we work to live and that is no
life at all…the current nihilism that permeates our lives and our society
and our souls is symptom enough to tell us that the materialistic ideology
has failed…….

capitalism has failed because it is nihilistic which leaves us hopeless
and in despair…….we lead lives of quiet desperation…….
and we fill our days with attempts to forget our despair with
drugs and booze and TV and the promise of materialism (a better life by
buying things… an empty promise)

how do we achieve what seems to be the impossible… achieving
meaning in our empty and pointless lives? a return to god? we cannot
reach meaning by reaching for another empty promise…

how do I, Kropotkin, rationalize, understand the meaning of my life?

What can I think of that will give my life some meaning? I can give
my life meaning by searching for and the understanding of what it means
to be human… I can search for meaning by the search itself… the search for
meaning gives my life meaning… for it is something that is greater then myself
and it is not an empty promise… that empty promise that is so much of our modern
existence… we have been lied to so often that we have retreated into ourselves…
However if we reevaluate our values, we then give our lives meaning and that
reevaluation is no empty promise…we can give our lives meaning by the very
search we engage with to understand who we are and what are our values…

you want your life to mean something? engage in the search for
who you are and what is possible for you? the search itself will give
your life meaning…….

avoid the many empty promises of modern life… avoid the
ideology of materialism and capitalism and any other ism and ideology
that makes empty promises it cannot keep…… engage in being skeptical
about our modern world… we hear so many empty promises…

IQ45 “I am the only one who can fix what is broken”
MAGA is another empty promise
advertising is full of empty promises… buy our “car” or our “deodorant”
or our “beer” and by doing so, you can become something you are currently not
which is successful, desired, loved, the center of attention, the life of the party…
so many empty promises because are those attributes really what is important in life?

to be successful is just another empty promise and to be desired and to be the center
of attention and to be loved are all empty promises of the ads……

there is so many empty promises because we have failed to do something that is
basic for us… we no longer listen to ourselves… sometimes it doesn’t hurt
to be the lotus eater and withdraw into yourself and sometimes it’s time
to act and other times it is time to search……. sometimes it is time
to be inner driven and sometimes it is time to be outer driven…
we just need to listen to ourselves and learn to hear our inner self…

the universe is situationally driven… that there is no one absolute
factor that drives us… the situation gives is our goal and point…
our meaning is found (sometimes) situationally and sometimes
our meaning is found in the goal we desire to reach… (sometimes)

we cannot react the exact same way in different situations…
we must become situationally aware of what we do and can do……

and our meaning is found in our understanding of the situation…

as we age, we have different situations… I am old and my situation
is far different then when I was young and I must react differently
today because of this fact… I am aware of the situation and I am
reacting to my situation appropriately… if I am to find my meaning,
I must understand my current situation in life… I search for meaning
in concepts and ism’s and a engagement with who I am… I can no
longer react in some physical terms for I can no longer react physically…
I cannot climb a mountain anymore… but I can engage in the understanding
of who I am…I can find meaning… if I understand what goals are possible
and what goals are not possible… I can find meaning if I understand
my current situation…………

so what is your meaning or goal in life?

what engagement is possible for you?

what is your situation?

Kropotkin

K: I thank you for your thoughts… as for me, I really don’t care if anybody reads me
or not… I am not engage in a writing a journal…I am engage in making my report
to other human beings as to what I have found about being human…

If I was 30 years younger, I might have sold everything and do as you suggest, but
I am old now…my situation is not conductive to such youthful actions…

as to Marxism or any other “ism” those are possibilities for us to engage in…
I have reported that I believe capitalism to have failed and to why I believe
capitalism has failed…I am engaged in exploring the possibilities
to what it means to be human… I am engage in the “why”…
why… why do we live the way we do? what is the point of life?
what is the meaning of life? certainly not in the 40 plus years we work
and we gain nothing in those 40 years of work outside of destroyed
bodies and lost souls…so what are our possibilites? those are the questions
I ask… and if no cares, so be it… I care and that is enough… so I shall
continue to write… even if there weren’t another soul on planet earth, I
would continue to write and make my report as to what it means to be human…

Kropotkin

and my constant refrain of discovering “who you are”
does have an individualistic, romantic refrain to it…
but it ties into a collective understanding of who we are
and what are our possibilities… we are not individuals outside
of or independent of society/culture/state… no, we must
engage with and be part of society/the state…
and this is why I have suggested the Marx vision of
what is possible is better for us, individually and collectively…

my calls for individualism is within the context of our being
part of the collective… we can be individuals within a group/social
context…for we are social/group creatures… and we must
work our individual needs/wants/desire in the context of being
social/group creatures…… evolution has “determined”
us to be social creatures and we cannot escape this… we must
remain in contact with other human beings… this is why
in prison, solitary confinement is the worst form of punishment…
we must, must have contact with other humans or we suffer
and sometimes we even go insane from our lack of contact of other
human beings………so, what is your relationship with other human beings?

it is not only about the I… Ich as it were, it is also about the Du… the you…
some claim, Buber for example that the other, the Du… is god
and we are in relationship with god and we discover ourselves in
this relationship with the other…….I believe we discover ourselves
in our relationship with other human beings, not god or some artificial
ism…but in the you… as in other human beings………the Greeks felt
that we become human in the polis, the city… and they are right…….

you can only find you in the midst of others… man alone is man incomplete…

meaning is found within the context of the others, not just in context with oneself…

Kropotkin

for krackpotkin’s ears only:

vocaroo.com/i/s0PsVSyWDwOh

while we’re sharing a beer over the plight of the working class, see if you can top this one:

if i take the job making $8.50 an hour carrying bricks through the mud, by the time i drive the two hours (to job and back) and have the taxes taken out of my check (a portion of which is a state tax to pay for the public defender who didn’t defend me from charges i was not guilty of - yeah you read that right), what is left in my pocket? just enough to keep me alive so that i can repeat the same thing the next day. and that’s the trap much of the working class is purposely put in. i have read letters written by 19th century bourgeois factory owners who outright admitted they lower employee’s wages for that very reason; to make them dependent on their job.

well why the fuck am i working at a temp service? only an idiot or an unskilled lowlife would do such a thing, right? what about a guy who can build a house with one hand tied behind his back, but can’t get a real job because of felonies on his record that he’s not guilty of? or what if the guy did happen to land a real job when he got out of prison (he shouldn’t have been in), but the capitalist piece of shit he’s filled the pockets of over the last year has refused to pay him what he owes him? the plot does indeed thicken.

and if this guy did get hired by another capitalist parasite, he hasn’t enough money to get him to the first paycheck because he can’t make enough money at the capitalist parasite temp service to pay the small claims court fees to sue the the capitalist parasite fucker that owes him… money he’d use to sustain himself until that first paycheck.

what do i do, K? that’s right; i break out of it. but not yet. the time is not right. there is much to do first.

and it’s not that my current situation won’t resolve itself somehow. i always ‘pull through’. what is important here is that it is only a matter of time before such a situation takes shape again. the question you have to ask yourself is; how many times will you let it happen before enough is enough. are you retarded? a stupid dupe? a masochist? have you made up your mind and are just procrastinating, or are you still a coward? ah, you’re still waiting… waiting for ‘everything to magically work out’… and every time it happens again, you tell yourself the same. you’ll do this a thousand times before you finally admit to yourself that you’re a coward… that you haven’t the balls to do what you know you need to do. eventually this humiliation becomes too much… and one has to break out.

timing, my man. it’s not an if, but a when. and that ‘when’ will present itself when the moment is right. you don’t know when it will be, but you’ll know it when you see it… and you better seize that fucker before you lose your nerve.

this is not a plea for sympathy or a complaint. this is not a ‘look at how much i suffer’. this isn’t some theoretical philosophical bullshit i make up to pass my idle time at a forum and dazzle everyone with my intellect. this is the real deal, big K. and there’s soooo much more, my man. so much i no longer have the patience to explain to the wrong people. i drop this little gem for you so that you know you aren’t alone, and shake your hand as a man from your class. what do the rest matter? chatter, krackpotkin. noise in the background.

you won’t top that in a million days. you’re small fish, K, but a working man nonetheless. i promote you to the rank of cadet in the vanguard party. salutes

i’d say that’s understandable, sure, but not something i could indentify with. i had pretty much figured out that everything was ‘wrong’ by the age of twenty, and knew then that i’d never commit to the kind of ‘normal’ life most people lead. there would be no steady job, no house, no family and very little property. maybe in some other world, but not this one. this one was nothing to make any serious investments in. it was for fun and not to be taken seriously. 'course i could have decided otherwise, but it would have required me to sacrifice my ‘principles’… and these were more dear to me than anything i might gain by compromising them. and in the twenty some years that followed that decision, my convictions have only been strengthened. i thank my lucky stars that i didn’t ‘walk the straight and narrow’. i can’t imagine what a disaster i might have become had i done so.

and i never asked myself that most pressing of questions that normal people ask: ‘what will you do when you get old’. to me the answer seemed obvious. don’t get old, and if and when you get weary, it’s the right time to die. one has to know when to die. as nietzsche put it, sometimes it can become indecent to continue living.

but yes, i understand. humans are nest builders and like to live in large immobile boxes in clusters of other large immobile boxes in which other nest builders live. that’s a very strange, herd-like behavior and seems rather uneventful, but i suppose there’s nothing wrong with it.

Listen 75, please.

I know You will not. And I would not want to either to express the extent of which You’ve grabbed my attention.
You must be far Younger then I imagined .

Please listen. There is a god who can not physically help us because IT is also a spiritual being.

You must not believe that evolution not coalesced with the body and mind and soul and the spirit as well.

Its just that interaction is cyclical, just as is life. It never stops , ever, it continues for ever in a timeless void of which some have inkling. That is so hard to believe . is as hard as the breaking heart of a child who is told there is no Santa Clause

If people stopped believing in Santa, it would terminate the epoch that commemarated Christianity, which dictates positive feelings of carrying our crosses, that we can all share.

The development of this philosophical tradition is really of inestimable value,
and it’s surfacing out of the nothingness of human consciousness is a miracle really, however interpreted.

You must have had a beautiful mother and maybe a non caring father.and no caring brothers as well.

If you don’t believe in love per se, try believing in mine, toward You, a perfect stranger.

God be with You and atixl around for at.least.one person You could lovr and who may also love You for who You are.

If not, love Yourself as I tried to love , because me too feel such a failed soul, but don’t let the erosion of faith of a.20 year.old. child soul over come that, which is yet to come

Yes I like Nietzsche from the time I was in my twenties and he was.my sole mate.

Cheers.and God bless.

It may be I am way off the mark, but not by much.