a new understanding of today, time and space.

first of all that’s one of those existentialist party slogans that’s responsible for getting philosophers all fucked up in the head and up all night. ‘does my life have meaning’ isn’t even a real question. what do you mean ‘does your life have meaning’? are you asking a specific question about some aspect of your life? you gotta narrow that question down some or every philosopher in a ten block radius that hears it will go nuts with it and you won’t get a sensible answer from any of em.

well we got three possibilities. eternal life in some magical realm, total annihilation, or… and this one’s my favorite… a repetition of everything over and over and over again. now there’s no plausible evidence for the first option, a shit load of plausible evidence for the second option, and a little plausible evidence for the third option. the good news is, with the elimination of the first option, there’s no way you can lose. so, if it’s curtains after you die, you’d not be around to know it and therefore wouldn’t be able to suffer it. and if there’s some kind of repetition, you get to do the whole thing again, which means you’d get to talk to me again, and that alone is enough to justify a life.

but you have be ready for total oblivion. you gotta think long and hard about your death and get your head right, because it just might be a one-shot deal, peter.

meanwhile, old people should spend the last half of their life putting all their energy into their family, especially their children (if they have any). you want to try to live vicariously through them, stay close to them (unless you hate em), involve yourself in everything they do, and give your elder wisdom as guidance. you want to say things like ‘no, fuck no, are you retarded, don’t do that! i did that once and let me tell you… it did not work out,’ and ‘yes, that’s a smart choice, and here’s why: [insert wisdom].’

old people have a very high rank in the family, or should, and with that comes great responsibility as well as privilege. but really, at your age you’re supposed to enjoy yourself. what about hobbies? got any hobbies?

As noted our modern ism’s and ideologies such as communism
and capitalism and Catholicism, all exist outside of our control…
we are victims of each in the fact we have no choice in the
grand movement of those ism’s… in communism, we exist
within the grand sweep of history in which we can only watch
as historical materialism, which is a broad force of history
works out our personal and collective fate, all of which is outside
of our personal ability to control……. individually, we are victims
of these broad forces, not having any means to control or change these
forces… the same exists for capitalism, whereas our individual fate
is determined by that “invisible hand” of broad market forces that we
have no control over… victims once again of forces outside of our control
or any ability to change…….but there are other forces outside of our control
in which we have no control over or any ability to change… we have modern
technology… do you have any control over all these new technologies?
who among us actually understand how our cars work or how the computer
works? Not that many…these modern forces of technology exists
outside of our control and our ability to change…just like those ism’s
and ideologies of capitalism and communism…do you have any control
or ability to change anything that exists in our “modern” world? no, not really…
the political system has been bought and sold as our individual congressmen
and senators have been bought by big money and big business like big pharma
and the Cock brothers and the NRA… do you have any say or influence given
the money now flowing into politics? no, of course not……
so once again we see the average person having no control over or
any ability to change our political or economic or social structure of
the modern world…….

modern man is competently powerless to control any aspect of their lives…
we are victims of our “modern” world which has taken away any chance we
have to change, affect, direct or move people or events in the modern world……

Now how can I personally have any meaning when I have zero control over
any aspect of my life? I cannot change or control any part of my economic,
political or social life……… life is what happens to me… not what I do to life…
the technology already exists to put me out of a job… we can easily have
stores with no need for cashiers or baggers… the only thing saving me is
the fact I shall have already retired or died before the new technology
destroys an entire industry…and I have absolutely no control over this…
it will happen regardless of how I approve or disapprove or even feel about it…
it is not a question of if, it is a question of when will my job of being a cashier disappears…

and this is the modern world writ small… events outside of my control and my
ability to affect will completely change my life and not for the better…

the large, grand scale forces that are beyond my control changing and dominating
my life without any input from me… it will just happen and there isn’t a dam
thing I can do about it……… and that is in essence, modern life… forces changing
and impacting us without any input or response from us… it will just happen and
we can only respond to it………….and that response will be pretty meaningless because
no one will be able to hear it in the midst and confusion of all that white noise
of society…

so, once again, I ask, how do I find meaning in this modern age?

those broad and all encompassing forces of our modern times,
in the midst of all those forces, how do I find meaning?

forces I have no control over and forces I cannot affect……

and we engage with these broad forces we have no control over
by wondering if someone has a “hobby”? such a irrelevant question…
given the how unimportant our lives have become in this modern world…
can we have any meaning in the broad forces like the “invisible hand of god”
that dominate capitalism or the “historical materialism” that dominates
communism or the plan that god has for all of us to lead us to the final days
of judgment… we are irrelevant in the midst of forces we have no say over
and we cannot control…… in the midst of that irrelevancy, how can I find meaning?

I would have better luck trying to stop the earth from circling the sun then
finding some relevancy in our modern world…….

is Voltaire right? should we just be content with taking care of our own garden
and leave the business of life to outside forces we have no say over and no
control over? is withdrawing into ourselves an answer? we see millions of
our fellow human beings have already taken that course…
anyone who says, a pox on both houses has already withdrawn into
themselves, into their own garden……

and in our modern, secular world, I don’t see how we can find meaning in
such impersonal forces like religion or god…………

so, what is left? do we retreat into ourselves, into our fixation on
celebrity news or our passion into our own personal field of hobbies
or sports or TV or drugs or booze? so many have left the field of
battle, left the outside world for small personal goals… which is
why millions fail to vote every election… they have given up trying to
change or influence or having a say in matters that dominate their lives…
the impersonal forces of capitalism and bought and sold politicians
have millions of people abandoning life and retiring their own
personal garden…

and once again I ask, how do I find meaning in the midst of all this?

Kropotkin

in addition to the above, I left/forget about other forces we
have no control over, evolution, physics, biological, astronomic… forces
of which we have no say over and no ability to control… we cannot control
the natural forces of physics or biology or astronomy… we cannot change
what evolution has done to us and we cannot change what is happening in
the stars and we cannot change the forces of physics…… these are just
another brick in the wall in terms of forces that we have no say over
and we cannot control…….we cannot control gravity or space or time
and we have no say or control over………

now combine these forces with all the other forces I mentioned in the last post……

and once again, how do I meaning given all the forces in the universe that I
have no control over and have no say over?

Kropotkin

want to see how the Modern universe works where we
have no ability to control or have a voice over our “world”…
please see Kafka, “the Trial” and “the Castle” these are
excellent reminders of the modern world…

thus offering us a way ART helps us process and understand the world…

Kropotkin

we question the point of both Descartes and Kant’s final
results…… for example, Descartes wanted to set the limits
of knowledge so that science could fit into the “current”
way of thinking… in other words, to make room for science
by denying faith… which of course he didn’t because he was
a Frenchman living in a time where it was dangerous to deny
faith…but the real question lies with this question…
so we know the limits of knowledge, now what?

where does it lead us? the middle ages was the age of faith,
but where did that faith lead us? read any good history of the middle ages
and see exactly where faith lead us? The thousand plus years of the middle ages
were some of the most abysmal years in human history… faith has little value if
the results were as terrible as the middle ages were really terrible years for human
beings…

now you can make an chicken or the egg argument for which came first,
the rise of or the rebirth of civilization or the slow loss of faith that
ended the middle ages…………Descartes of course wrote after the middle ages
and even after the Renaissance during another age but, but the questions of
Descartes were questions that had lingered on from the middle ages……

and the questions of Kant were also about Knowledge…what are the limits of
knowledge? but the essential question of Kant about knowledge leaves out
an important point…… this question of the limits of knowledge,
what are we suppose to do with it? what does it lead to? what it does it mean to us?

and that is the question we always need to ask, what does it lead to?
what is next? so we try to think about another period of history which
is the Enlightenment. Ok, so we are suppose to free ourselves from authority,
to dare to think for ourselves, Sapere Aude, and then what?

we have found ourselves trapped inside of the many forces of man and nature…
we are trapped inside of the force of capitalism where the “invisible hand of god”,
the market forces has left us without free will or the power to act freely because
we cannot escape these market forces which dominate our lives…

we cannot escape the forces of nature which is gravity and evolution
and the cycle of the stars and galaxies as they circle around the universe…
(of course what they circle is up for some question)

so we think for ourselves and we get an understanding of how trapped
we are in the various forces that exists……

so now what? we cannot escape into religion or god because we
are trapped in forces also beyond our control… if god has a plan for
the universe and us, then we have choice, no free will, for no matter what
we do or say, we cannot change or control or have any say about god’s plan…
Religion traps us as firmly as our ism’s and ideologies trap us as does
the forces of nature trap us…….

so Kant offers us self determination as a goal and once again we must
ask, then what? as a victim of the many forces of ism’s and natural
causes, my self determination which cannot affect or
control or have any say about those forces which dominate my life,
what does it matter to pretend to have self determination when
those forces of ism’s and natural forces are the real factors in my life…

the question becomes, what can I do in the face of these forces which
control my life… what response can I make in the face of these forces?
How can I find “salvation” given the nature of these forces which control
every part of my life…… how can I be “saved”?..…

Nietzsche response was to postulate the eternal reoccurrence and the
ubermensch………to say yes, to the forces of the universe which control me
and my life… to find the very limited aspect of our lives and learn to
control that aspect of life…… here we find ourselves looking at morality…
and ART as responses to the limited possibilities we have in the midst
of forces which dominate and limit our possibilities…

so given how we are at the whim of forces beyond our control
and us not having any say in capitalism and communism and religion…

how are we to be “saved”?

Kropotkin

How to be “saved”?

How to find “salvation” in our modern world?

I think we have to deal with what we know, know to be true…

I am life… life is transitory…I am transitory… I will live for
a relatively short period of time and then I die… pure and simple…

my existence will be of short duration…….

but the cells, the atoms within my body, have existed since the beginning of time
and will continue to exist long after this current form of being human, my
next existence will compose of many, many different living creatures……
as my current atoms, cells will decompose into something else and my individual
cells, atoms will take different forms, dog or cat or bird or bee or something else
entirely……

we exist within forces that limit or control who we are…
we have natural forces which limit us, gravity, evolution, chemistry…
we also have forces in ism’s and ideologies that also limit us…
we are encased within such ideologies as religion, capitalism,
communism and as we are encased, we exist without any
recourse or voice in or ability to change those forces that
dominate us………we have no say in capitalism because
we are determined by “the invisible hand of god”
which is the market forces outside of our control and we
have no say about those market forces……….

so, how do we understand the “now what” given
this understanding of these forces which give us no control over
or no say about them……

we must work within the very narrow limits of what is left after
the forces that are, limit our actions…….

for example, we exist within the market forces of capitalism which
don’t allow us much room for freedom or action given we are determined
by those market forces…….

I can say no, no to those market forces and not allow myself to be
a victim of capitalism but that leaves me to a very short and miserable
existence as I cannot survive on my own… I cannot control my existence,
to clothe and feed and house myself outside of the forces of capitalism…

to do so is death… and the main rule of existence is “thou shall do whatever
it takes to survive”……. that is a rule of evolution that has been
written into our very DNA… the very fabric of who we are is
written by the forces of evolution… the rules which we cannot
disobey without direct and immediate consequences…
we must eat and we must drink water and we must sleep
and we must release body waste and we must have contact
with other human beings… these rules, these forces of evolution,
we must obey them… we have no choice…so can I be “saved”
from these rules or commands of evolution? no, we cannot change
these rules from the force of evolution………. so, to be able to
understand what is possible in regards to being “saved”
from the forces that dominate our lives, we must also understand
what we can or cannot change…

I am a transitory being who has to follow certain forces, the force of
gravity… I cannot change as I cannot change the rules of evolution…
I am forced by these other forces to have limited ability to change…
I cannot change my need to eat as I cannot change the force of
gravity… so what can I change?

these forces which dictate what are our possible actions or reactions,
what can we have control over or have any say about in regards to these
forces?

we cannot change the natural forces that dictate who we are, gravity and
evolution and the circling of the stars… but we can change the ism’s
and ideologies that dictate our lives but I cannot change those isms’ and
ideologies by myself… that is the next lesson to be learned… the forces that
dictate or dominate like capitalism and communism and religion, I cannot
change or have any say over them as one solitary individual……

it takes millions of people to effect change in those forces like
capitalism or communism…….or religion………….

as individual people we cannot change the forces of the world that
hold us hostage… but we can try to convince millions of others to
change… and therein lies another possibility to be “saved”…

the coordination of millions of people… we can be “saved” with the
collective actions of millions in changing those ism’s and ideologies
that have us having no say or control in our lives………

now I am the first to admit that what I have offered has
many difficulties… but that is the point of being saved…if it
was easy, everyone would do it……….

so how are we to be “saved” from the forces which dominate our lives?

Kropotkin

let us take a deeper, more in depth look at a particular
ism… capitalism………

I have already noted that capitalism negates, promotes nihilism
because it negates humans and their values in the pursuit of profits…

now let us look at this new picture of capitalism that I have presented…

we have no say or cannot affect capitalism because capitalism is about
those market forces “the hand of god” and these market forces determines
our fate, not our own actions… the market forces can “determine”
or decide that I am no longer useful as a checker, the CEO then
based on market forces, the loss of profits, decides to downsize
the number of people employed by the business… the CEO reduces
operating costs which is “dictated” by market forces… this reduction
is purely done by “market forces”… impersonal forces over which I have
no control over, I have no say over, and I cannot affect… I can call this
nihilism because it negates human beings and their values based on
forces I have no control over and have no say over……

we see that capitalism is, in its very nature, nihilistic…
if we have no say over something and have no control over
something and cannot affect it, it is by its very nature, nihilistic…

so let us continue this…… let us take this notion of religion…

we have, by common consent, god and god is supposed to
have a plan… the second coming is part of the plan and
the apocalypse is also part of this plan… a plan in which we
have no say over and no control over and we cannot affect it…
all we can do is say, yes or no, to some belief in god and jesus…
and by doing so, we are “saved”…if this is true, then it is irrelevant
what I do or think or say… the second coming is a-coming and the
apocalypse is a-coming………. and if I have no say over and cannot
change it, it negates anything I say or do…because what I say or do,
is irrelevant………. I am negated and anything that negates or devalues
human beings and their values is nihilistic…

so religion negates me and my values… as does capitalism…
as does communism as does any ism or ideology that I cannot control
or affect or have any say over………

so, as I always say, now what?

now what?

ummmmmmm,

Kropotkin

one of the noticeable things about life is the ways
we exist in conflict… I will give some small examples which
can be extended to large things… I may want to have lunch at a pizza place
and my wife wants to have lunch at an sushi place… as we have been together
for over 25 years, we can easily resolved this conflict in the usual way,
we go to the sushi place, ummmmmmmmm…yah…anyway…

not all conflicts are so easily handled… one person wants, desires, something
and another person wants or desires something else and we have some conflict over
whose desires and wants gets met………this is the very nature of human conflict…
one person/group/nation wants or desires something and another person/group/nation
either has it but doesn’t want to give it up or their wants and desires clash in some
fashion…

the very essence of conflict lies within those inner wants and needs and desires
that the human beings are attempting to fulfill in some manner or fashion…

the fulfillment of wants/needs/desires is the basis of conflict……. so to avoid
conflict, do we attempt to follow ascetic and deny and reign in our wants
and desires and needs? that path is a very attractive route, but has it succeeded?

I would say no, if you read the accounts of the ascetics of the Medieval period who
went into the desert and tried to control their urges, they suffered
and had conflicts within themselves during their entire ascetic journey…

even the Buddha tried the ascetic route and turned away from it as being
unsuccessful…… the entire Christian philosophy centers itself around
this idea of asceticism, of denying oneself the pleasures of the flesh…
and you cannot call this call to asceticism by any means to be successful…

so, the answer seems to lie in another fashion… how do we limit conflicts
by somehow handling our wants, needs or desires?

as I have gotten older, I have found myself in less conflict with others because
my wants and desires and needs have grown less…… the passion of youth is
far less in me as I have grown older and with less passion comes less conflict…

but I certainly cannot expect the fire and fury of youth to be contained by any
such lessening of those passions…… so, perhaps the answer is correctly
given by Nietzsche………… we spend our youth fulfilling our passions, we
quench our fires and passion in our youth by answering our wants and desires
and needs…………….the Greeks found this to be an answer in their Dionysian
rites…the set program of holidays in which the people found release in
Dionysian or the excessive and out of control actions of the people………
you find release and you return to being in control…and being in control
is Apollonian… which is harmony, being in control, math and science,
we see in this dichotomy a possible solution to our problem of how do
we solve this question of conflict…………

human beings have energy and the key question, and perhaps the most
important question of being human, is this, how do we engage
in our energy? upon what do we use this energy?.. how do we engage
in our energy which is found in wants/needs/desires among other places?

as I have gotten older, I have less energy and thus the reason I cause
less conflict is I have less energy…… but we cannot expect people to
voluntarily lessen or remove that energy… we need that energy as
a people, as a society, as a nation…… the question becomes, where
do we direct that energy? it could be said that war was created so that
society can direct that energy into useful and beneficial ways for society……

that energy of fire and passion that drives people must be dwelt with in
some fashion and turning it into an a self-denial or asceticism will not
work as evidenced by the many who have traveled down that path…

if we find an answer to this question, we find the answer to this question
of how do we handle conflicts.

or to answer this another way, the Christian solution to conflicts
by asceticism cannot work… so we reject the Christian solution
and try to find another solution……….

this question of conflict resolution is a critical one in our modern day
and age………………

and what is the answer?

Kropotkin

well, its been a while since I posted and want you all to know
that I haven’t pulled a James like disappearance…in the last two
weeks, I was sick for several days with some sort of cold/flu that
has been going around… and it is impossible to think when one
is busy coughing or praying for death because you feel terrible…
then I got transfered to another store which is quite a ways away…
and all the shifts I’ve gotten have been during the hours I normally
write…I haven’t gotten any reading or thinking or writing done
in the last few weeks… and it bothers me, a lot… I realize I need
to keep doing my studies and thinking about what it means to be
human… not for you, but for me…I feel better when I am
working on such philosophical matters…

I hope to be writing again soon and regularly…

Kropotkin

Wishing you well. You do a good impression of James!

After a solid two weeks of not posting, I’mmmmm back…
finally a day off with nothing to do…

I am still engaged in thinking about what it means to be human…

This question of what it means to be a human being in March of 2019,
and of being American and white and male…

I recall my Descartes… about his demon and his quest to create
certainity in what knowledge we can have… I cannot see how
Descartes “Cogito, ergo sum” “I think, therefor I am” reflects who
I am… the “Cogito” has no relevance for me in 2019…for this question
of the boundries of human knowledge isn’t relevant for me…
the question is “what does it mean to be human in 2019”

Much of the questions of philosophy has no relevance for me…
the logical positivism of the 20th century has no relevance for me…
because logical positivism is mostly a theory of knowledge and finding
the limits of knowledge doesn’t lead me anywhere…I might find the limit
of my knowledge and… then what? it doesn’t tell me what is possible for me…

I think of the average person in the middle ages and I see that the “role”
they held was the only possibility for most people… in other words,
if someone was born a shoemaker, that was the only possibility for that
person… there were very little possibility or mechanism for that person to
become something other then a shoemaker… If I was born a shoemaker in
1372, what were my possibilities? There was few opportunities for me to “become”
something else… if I showed talent, I might, might be able to go to school,
a theological university which was the only educational opportunity one might have…
I would train to become a priest and that was the only real way I had to
become something other then a shoemaker…

This is important to understand because today we have dozens of ways to
change our possibilities… from education to Art to sports to the political,
we can change our possibilities……

but these possibilities are limited within certain boundaries……
the theory of modern society suggest that we can become anything
we want but the reality is we cannot… we are limited in our possibilities…
and not just by our abilities…I didn’t go to collage and that fact alone
limits my possibilities… I am handicap which also limits my possibilities…
I am lower middle class which is another boundary… with no chance of
rising into a higher middle class rank……… I am fixed economically where
I am… I can go lower but I can’t get higher… so economically, I am limited…

How else can I achieve my possibilities? It is by understanding that
that we are social creatures… we find our possibilities, not economic,
by our actions and interactions with others… I can see by my interactions
with others if I am nice or mean or vain or smart or witty……. in other words,
we can see our interactions with others as another aspect of our possibilities…

It is in our engagement with others that we can find our possibilities…
which is to suggest that we have two levels of possibilities… we
have an outer possibility of economic or political or social growth…
and, and we have an inner possibility of growth… which is to say,
we have the possibilities of becoming who we are…I can become the
possibility of becoming nice or being kind or being funny or any combination of
all three…it is my inner becoming that is within the grasp of our possibilities…

I can also do so by my engaging in values… I can engage with the value of love
or with justice or with honor or happiness… and in my engagement with
the chosen value that I find my possibilities………

it is within the inner value that creates my outer possibilities…
in my engagement with the value of justice that gives me my
outer possibilities…I can engage with society not as a shoemaker or
a clerk or as a man but as someone who values justice and holds justice
as their primary value…in other words, I judge and understand the
universe in terms of my chosen value which is justice…

I see the universe through the value of justice and everything reflects
in and through that value to me…my possibilities are understood
in terms of justice…am I being just to my friends or am I being treated
justly at work or is society treating me with justice?

we can replace the value of justice with any other value and the sentence
will still ring true… am I treating my friends with love or am I being treated
with love at work or is society treating me with love?
the truth or strength of a value is that it is capable of having multiple
uses… we can act with truth or justice or love in several different
capacities be it work or home or society…

I can find my human possibility through my chosen value…

I exist within the human construct of capitalism but I don’t have
to find my value or my possibilities within capitalism…I can find out
who I am without resort to understanding my place within the capitalism
system…I am separate, apart from my place in the capitalist system…
it doesn’t define who I am… whereas the man in the middle ages couldn’t
define himself apart from the system he existed in, which was Feudalism…

but our society wants us to define ourselves within the terms of
capitalism, I am a worker, I am a producer, I buy things and I make things…
and I am lower middle class… all of these terms are used to define ourselves but
we don’t have to identify ourselves this way… which has the point of intellectual
history since the Renaissance… freeing ourselves from being defined within
certain specific parameters…by freeing ourselves from being defined by
authority or the church or the state… the classical statement of the
Enlightenment which is to free ourselves from the authority of the church
or the state or Aristotle…… that was the goal of the enlightenment…to
find a way to define themselves without resort to the authorities of the past…

we can define ourselves in terms of our chosen value/values……

so the question exists, how do we choose our value through which we define
ourselves? why this value instead of another value? do we choose values based
on the authority of the past? or do we find our values and live our values
as the enlightenment suggests, through our own efforts?

I have left a whole slew or range of possibilities off to the side to
work out the problem we need to solve…….

how are we to define ourselves and what method or possibilities do we
use to define ourselves?

Kropotkin

in light of our understanding or our ability to define ourselves lies
Aristotle or Kant’s categories…

so Aristotle used his idea of categories as a tool in which we can
define ourselves or understand ourselves in light of the chosen
categories…so in other words, we define ourselves in light
of the chosen categories…

the Aristotle categories are:

Substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, date, posture, state,
action, passion…and we define ourselves within those categories…
I exist as a possiblity within those given categories of quality or place or date
or passion or state…

the categories are a means of understanding or defining ourselves…
we see ourselves in terms of those categories…

Kant also had categories in which we must identify or understand
or define ourselves within…

his categories are:

Quantity: unity, plurality, totality…

quality: reality, negation, limitation…

relation:
inherence, substance/ which is substance and accident…
causality and depence/which is cause and effect…
community: reciprocity

Modality: possibility, existence, necessity…

For Kant, we understand ourselves, define ourselves in terms of
these categories… but the list seems to be very limited and the list
doesn’t really give us all our possibilities, our choices…

for example, where would ART exist in this list? where does the
existential question of, why am I here, belong on Kant’s list?
or what values should I choose, where does that belong in Kant’s list?

In fact, the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of “what should I hope for?”
or “what should I believe in”? or “what value/values should I hold”?
or “what should we expend our energy upon”? where do they fit
in Kant’s categories?

I cannot define myself using Kant’s or Aristotle categories because
the categories themselves fail to encompass what it means to be human
or to be able to define what it means to be human…

in fact, the very idea of the ancient idea of how one defines themself
is rather limited… take the medieval idea of defining ourselves in terms
of our relationship to the state/church or to where we stand in relations
to god…we cannot understand ourselves in light of a limited
viewpoints such as “what is my relationship to the Catholic church”?

it is part of, but not the entire “method” of understanding or defining
ourselves……. no matter how broad of a category one might create to
define or understand ourselves, we somehow manage to expand beyond
that category… I am more then the sum of my parts and that is
the unspoken trouble child of understanding or defining who I am…

No matter how large a set I create to define a human being,
there is some aspect of being human that lies outside of that set…
and that makes understanding or defining what is a human being
so hard………. we can never properly establish a set large enough
to encompass everything it means to be human… for example,
ART… it is just another means in which we understand or define what it
means to be human…but ART as with any set, is unable to create a set large
enough to be able to allow us to understand or define what it means to be human…

so what does it mean to be human?

or how are we to understand or define what it means to be human?

Kropotkin

let us think about what we do know and what we don’t know…

We know that we humans, are transitory, temporary beings…
we are finite…

we know that we are matter, which means we are also energy…

we share both these traits with everything in the universe…

we know the universe is transitory and we know that the universe is also
made up of matter which means the universe is also energy……

one might ask, what about space and time? what can we know about them?

well, we know that time itself will end at some point in the future in billions of years…

and we know that space is some form of matter because it bends………

space is flexible and bends so it is something… we just don’t know what

and we know light bends……. so it is something……

and that means that space and light are matter and energy…thus they are
like all other matter in the universe…………

but matter is only a small percentage of the known mass in the universe……

we think that dark matter and dark energy is the bulk of the universe……

we think… but we don’t know thus we can only guess and that is not
our goal today… we are only talking about things we know……

everything we do is transitory… our words, our buildings, our ART,
if it is made or done by humans, it is transitory………

as living matter, we are a product of evolution…

we are determined by evolution to have certain processes which we
cannot exists outside of ………….

thus we must exists within certain parameters…… we must eat
and we must drink water and we must breath and we must sleep
and we must remove excess waste and we procreate and
and we must have feedback loops to inform us of what is going on in
our bodies and environment and we are finite…….

these facts are the same for everything biological in the universe…

for everything biological must exists with certain processes in place for
the biological matter to exist………

these are the things we know

let us begin our work on things we do not know…….
that which is anything metaphysical… beyond the physical…
we cannot know anything beyond the physical…….thus we
cannot know if there is a god or heaven or hell or angels………

we cannot know if there is an immortal soul…

we cannot know anything outside of what we experience and what our
senses can tell us……

as we exist with certain properties that is shared by all matter and energy,
we can make reasonable guesses as to the nature of the universe because
we share those traits with the universe………….

now the living matter in the universe may be quite different from what
we understand to be life, but it must follow certain rules as all life must
follow certain rules to be life…….as you understand how there are many
different types of dogs and all those dogs look so very different but dogs
must follow certain rules to be dogs and if they don’t follow those rules, they
are not dogs… they are something else……… but dogs are still living matter
and as such, doges must follow the rules of existence which is existence is finite,
temporary…and matter is both matter and energy……….

thus we have the basis for all philosophy…… matter is finite/temporary…
and matter is both matter and energy………here begins our understanding of
what it means to be human… that we must follow certain rules to
be considered human……

now what is the next step?

how do we make the next understanding of what it means to be human?

Kropotkin

ok, so we understand that we human beings are matter/energy.

we have energy… so the question becomes, how or in what way do we use
that energy? We have noted that in the past, say during the long period
of the hunter/gatherer stage of human existence, our energy was
dedicated toward procuring the necessary items for our continued
existence, thus we spend energy on gathering food, clothing, shelter,
educating the young so they knew what to do to surviving… in fact,
anything we do, we must expend energy to do that anything…
so the gathering of and expending energy is one of the primary
functions of human existence… even such a task as sleeping
requires energy to do so………. so one of the key questions of
human existence is this question of energy…….

how are we to gather the energy we need and what are going to
expend that energy on?

so think of human existence as a question of energy expenditure…
how we get it and what do we spend it on?

so far we haven’t gotten to any questions of values or anything besides the basics,
but now we reach the point of the questions of values… for it is values that
help us make our choices as to what should we spend our energy on…

we can spend energy on creating ART or we can wage war or we can dance the
night away… the choice in being human is what are we to spend our energy on…
and values help us decide or determine what we should spend our energy on…

I am old… I have far less energy then I used to have… so I can use my off days
watching TV or going to movies or to reading or to doing what I am doing right now…

I have limited energy, so I must expend my energy carefully, with real thought behind it…

when I was young, I could waste my energy because it didn’t matter, I had plenty of
energy to fuel me… I could be inefficient and wasteful with my energy… it didn’t matter…

so when we think in terms of energy, we cannot allow ourselves to focus exclusively
on energy to fuel our cars or home or airplanes… we must engage with
an understanding of we humans are energy and plenty of it…… so how are we to
spend that energy? sending kids to war is a wasteful and inefficient way of spending
their energy… we must be smart in how we are to use our energy, both
our mechanical and our biological energy…as with anything, energy
in the form of tree’s and oil is limited… but other matter has energy…
we can discover new ways to convert matter into energy…
for any matter can be converted into energy… we just have to
figure out how…but because there is no loss in either matter or energy
in the universe, we really have a source of energy as long as there is matter
in the universe. we can turn anything into energy……. we just have to make sure
it is not a finite resource that we are converting…if we can convert water into
energy, that is great however when we run out of water, we then have some
serious issues……. but the overall amount of energy/matter in the universe
never changes…… that is the point… and we must use this knowledge to
our benefit…….

so human existence is a question of energy and how are we to spend that energy?

Kropotkin

One of the pursuits of philosophy has been
pursuit of the basic principle of the universe…

what is the driving, basic principle that makes up our universe?

that basic, driving force is energy/matter…….

we have answered one of the primary questions in early philosophy…
the universal that is everything is energy/matter…… that is the basic
principle of the universe…….

for their is nothing on the other side of energy/matter…

it cannot be reduced into something else… this conversion
of energy into matter and matter into energy is the most basic
and fundamental principle of the universe… everything begins
and ends here……

now the question becomes, does energy have a goal?
does matter have a goal to achieve or is energy/matter directionless?

if we look at the forces of the universe, gravitation, electromagnetism,
weak interaction and the strong interaction… we see that they are not directed.
they simple act without foresight or understanding of cause or effect……

they simple are…

to assume that the energy/matter in the universe is directed is to assume
something that we cannot know…… how do we connect this directionless
energy of the four forces in the universe into our understanding of what it means
to be human?

as evolution is a force, just as gravity is a force, we see that evolution has
harnessed energy into us… we have energy because we are living matter…
and to be living matter is to be energy… evolution simply took that energy
and did something with it… evolution is directionless but it always uses
energy to maintain the forms that matter takes…to study evolution is
really the study of historical form living matter took…dinosaurs
are just energy taking form and all that life that existed before humans…
that was simply energy taking form…… and there was no design or purpose
to the form that energy took… it simply is nothing more then a formula…

take time, billions of years and add energy/matter and
and life will take hold…even inhospitable environment’s can
support some form of life even if it is a single cell organism.

it took over 4 billions years for human beings to be created on planet earth…
it is not a fast process… and given its nature, it is not an efficient process…
for energy by not being directed is not a efficient process…… but we can direct
our energy… and that separates us from the animals, we can direct what
we spend our energy to and we understand how energy works…it is this
question of energy that separates us from all other life…… we can combine
our energy and achieve goals such as the building of houses or the creation
of ART or whatever…

the question of the state, of government is a simple one, how are we going to
direct our collective energy? on what are we going to use our energy for?

here comes the question of values… for values direct the use of our energy…………

are we to use our energy to gain positive goals or are we going to use our energy
on negative goals? love is a positive energy and hate is a negative energy
and greed is an negative energy……. and hope is a positive energy………

our values helps us decide on what goals we shall achieve using our energy……

so the question of life is simply a question of what are we spending our energy on?

so the Kantian/Kropotkin questions of, what am I to do? What shall I hope for?
what may I hope for? what values should we hold? are really questions of
how are we to use our energy… to what purpose are we going to use our personal
and collective energy on?

and energy has a personal and a collective usage…… so how are we going to
collectively use our collective energy… is really the question the state faces.

upon what are we going to use our energy on?

and the list is open, far and wide… we can expend energy on
eliminating poverty or going into space or we can use our energy on wasteful,
inefficient projects like war or hate………the choice we have as human
beings is really a question of what are we spending our energy on…

Kropotkin

In the beginning was energy…….

in that statement lies everything we need to know……

that the universe was created as energy…………

and energy can be converted into matter and matter into energy…

and all the mass of the universe that the universe began with, the
universe will end with…

here begins our next idea which is entropy: 1. a thermodynamic quantity
representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion
into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder and
randomness in the system…2. a lack of order or predictability;
a gradual decline into disorder…

the same amount of energy/mass exists in our universe, but
the energy in the universe dissipates… it doesn’t change the amount
of mass in the universe but it simply bleeds off…and it bleeds off
in a random manner… there is no rule by which we can predict
the amount of dissipation in any mass… as I grow older,
I don’t have the energy I once had and that is entropy… a random loss
of energy which has dissipated…I know I know I cannot eat as much food
as I used to eat… In my running days, I could eat two large pizza’s and
wonder what was for dinner… these days, I might be able to eat a
potato and be full… I am taking in far less energy these days and it
shows in my outtake of energy…One needs energy to have energy…

the intake and outtake of energy is roughly even… if the outtake of energy
is more then the intake, we lose weight and if the intake is more then the outtake,
then we gain weight… so the mass we eat and the mass we lose must be roughly
even… it is a formula… A = A…and that is why your weight remains roughly
the same over the years…the intake and outtake are roughly even…

but as my entropy continues, I shall continue to lose energy as I age…
that is what old age is, the natural loss of energy……

every question of existence begins and ends as questions of energy/matter/mass…

the question of the state… the government is one of energy…how are we
to expend the energy we have as a people and mechanically……

the conservative and liberal question of the value of the state must now
be understood as questions of energy/matter…

how does the liberal idea fit into the energy/matter use of the universe?

how does the conservative idea fit into the energy/matter use of the universe?

Kropotkin

when understood what we see is this:

the universe is energy and the forms we see cows, cars, dogs, stars,
water, TV sets are all just energy in different forms… we mistake the
different forms for being something different but the reality is every form,
matter we see is simply a different arrangement of energy…

looking past the forms, we see energy and there is nothing past the energy…

Kropotkin

I have stated that emotions are energy…so we have
emotions like love and hate and anger and greed… I have labeled
these emotions either negative or positive…… now we must ask,
what makes an emotion like love positive and worth pursuing
and a emotion like hate a negative emotion and not worth pursuing…

emotions are energy… and love is an energy and take love and see
what it does to people… it energizes them, it empowers people,
love builds and creates… walk into a place with love and it
has a certain energy to it… a energy which builds into something…

now let us look at a negative energy… hate… hate is another energy
but hate reduces energy, hate dulls energy, hate nullifies energy……

walk into a retail store and “feel” the energy of the store…
feel the energy of the employees… if the store employees
are hopeful and full of positive energy, one can feel it… you can tell…

walk into my store and you have negative energy because the employees
have no hope, no positive energy, no love…it is a rather depressing
store to go into because it has so little energy and why? Because the employee’s
have lost hope, faith, energy in what they are doing…

look at the energy level of the people of the United States…
and the people with hope, love, the positive energy are the ones
who have energy… IQ45 is a low energy guy because he promotes low
energy values like hate and anger and greed…the United States had more
energy during the Obama years because he promoted positive values like hope
and love…

because human beings are energy, we are very aware of energy…
we are susceptible to the energy people put out and positive energy people
we react positively because high energy builds us, allows us to rise, high energy
rises and grows into something bigger all around us…I have been in
positive crowds and I have been in low energy crowds and the feeling
was different and quite noticeable…you have a boost of energy in a high
energy crowd and your energy is lowered in a low energy crowd……… we feed off
of this energy…… human beings quite literally feed off of energy… remember
we eat matter in which we get energy… and we are matter/energy……

and that is what America needs now… a boost of energy in the form of
positive energy…… we need to increase our intake of positive energy
and we will feel better about ourselves and about America………

Kropotkin

Now what does this mean?

we are the same material as the universe, matter/energy.

we human beings are the same, matter and energy.

And as matter/energy, we have the same needs and same wants
and same desires…… It becomes a matter of degree’s… some
need love a bit more then others and some need to feed a bit more then
others and some need to control a bit more then others, but the same
needs and wants and desires that exists in me, exists in you and in everyone…

the question becomes, if we all have needs and wants and desires, how do
we approach that? In other words, the formation of the state is simply
a means for us to achieve our needs, wants and desires without infringing
on the rights of other? If we want order and stability in our society,
we cannot act upon our impulses, impulses are simply needs, wants and desires,
for society to function, we must control our impulses. To think of a society
where we are unfettered in our attempting to achieve our needs, wants
and desires is to think of Hobbes original society…where it is every
person against every other person and “Life is nasty, short and brutish”.

this question of how are we supposed to answer our needs and wants
and desires without destroying the society we live in, may be the primary
question we humans face. Needs, wants and desires must be directed
toward some objective that doesn’t also damage society. We must be able
to have some means to achieve our needs, wants and desires but remain within
the framework of maintaining society. Now most theories of doing so are theories
of sacrifice, of renunciation, of asceticism, theories which try to deny those
needs, wants and desires. And to a certain degree, we must sacrifice who we
are to maintain order and stability within every organization we are part of, but
renunciation is not a action we can maintain and hold. Renunciation cannot
be a way of life, it must be a part of, but not the key factor in our life.

One of the key questions of life is this, how do we deal with our needs, wants
and desires that exist within us?

It could be properly said, that a human being is simply a creature that
makes it needs, wants and desires,a primary goal in its life.

Now one of the things to understand is we often desire and pursue
things that are harmful and detrimental to us… we pursue such harmful
things as related to our negative instincts. We pursue and expend energy
on such things as hate, anger, greed, lust… negative instincts…

but what we should be doing is pursuing positive instincts, love,
hope, peace, justice… we should be expending energy on matters that
are beneficial and help us, not destroy us.

we must become aware of and understanding why we must pursue positive
goals, wants, desires and needs. Again, it becomes a question of energy.
Positive goals create positive energy, we can expand and build upon
positive energy like love and hope and justice… negative energy like
hate and anger and greed decreases the amount of energy a person has.
when we are angry, we cannot build upon or expand upon that energy.
It can only destroy, not build and that is the problem with negative energy.

so the next aspect of society/the political is to make the pursuit of positive
energy to be a desired goal. And to a certain degree, society/state does that,
but the society/state also, to a certain extent, promotes the negative,
anger, hate, greed and lust. The materialism of our modern age is a
negative pursuit, buy our goods and become more popular or sexier or
more desirable. This materialism is built upon our negative instincts of
greed and lust among others. In other words, this pursuit of materialism
is another form of society trying to get its individual members to expand
energy on something. But it is a wasted goal to expend energy on such
negative instincts because it can never fully satisfy our needs, wants and
desires because we always want, need and desire more and more and more…
Materialism is really just another addiction like drugs and booze and gambling…
and it is a convenient addiction for society because it allows powerful
and wealthy individuals to become even more powerful and wealthier
because they hold the means of production… they own the businesses that
are tied into this addiction of materialism. YOU want people to become addicted
to your products because they will buy more and more and more…
Just like a drug dealer, you need people to be addicted to your product,
be it material goods like cars and TV sets or even be addicted to the
concept of materialism… recall what the Bush jr. said after 9/11 in
response to a question about what people should do?

He said, “people should go out and buy stuff”.

Yep, he said that. a good drug dealer he is. Keep the people addicted to your
product…

so what is the answer? we must become aware of the dangers of our materialism
and our futile attempt to feed our needs and wants and desires with materialism.

We must begin a reevaluation of what is our needs, wants and desires…
in truth, we really don’t need that much. we can happily survive with very little
and that is the answer of the mystics and the religious… be happy without
materialism because that materialism isn’t important and it isn’t that
important. and we must redo society and the state to address this question
of what is truly important… and thus we have Marx and his ilk……

you can understand political and social theory better if you think about
this question of how are we to achieve our goal of meeting our needs, wants
and desires without disrupting society…………

Kropotkin

this question of needs, wants and desires are place into
context when understood in our current, 2019, time…

we see what our unfettered attempts to feed our needs, wants and
desires have done… we have seen both the large scale damage,
climate change and world wide pollution and the massive extinction
event that has occurred during our watch…….to our small scale damage
done to our souls…we cannot however much we try answer or fulfill
our wants, needs or desires…I just filled a need by eating dinner, steak
actually, but that need will need to be filled again in the morning and again
during lunch and again and again and again, for the duration of my life…

Have you ever heard of a person who had sex once and said, yep, I’m good,
my needs and desires have been filled?

nope, the desires of food, fame, fortune, booze are never filled or sated…

for people, filling a need or want or desire is not a one time thing, it is an ongoing
lifetime thing…just as we need to evaluate our quest to become who we are,
we need to evaluate our needs and wants and desires… why do I want
that person or why do I “need” to attempt to make as much money as I possibly
can… why do I want to be a millionaire or why do I want to be famous?

we can only begin to understand ourselves if we not only become aware
of ourselves intellectually but within our needs and wants and desires…

we are driven by our needs and wants and desires and perhaps it is time we
understand that driven behavior of needs, wants and desires…

It is not enough to say, “evolution made me do it” for we are the sole
creatures of matter and energy that can override our evolutionary
demands within us…….we can act outside of our evolutionary DNA, the
code that dictates who we are and what is possible for us… we can say no to
the evolutionary demand or we can say yes to becoming something new…

that is the true nature of being human… we can rise above our evolutionary
coding and be something else besides our coding…….

no other animal, that we know of, can do that…….a dog must act like
a dog and a cat can only act like a cat and cows must be cows but human
beings, we can override our coding and become something else……

all animals have a fight or flight coding in them… it is evolutionary coding
that allows animals to survive another day but we humans, if we are strong
enough, we can override our fight or flight coding and do something different…

we can overcome who we are, within our genetic coding, and become more human…
which means we can overcome our coding… we can rise above our coding……
that is what it means to overcome our coding…… we are determined by evolution
to be a creature we call human beings… our coding determines who we are
but we can overcome that coding……. we can rise above the coding of
hate, anger, greed, lust…… we can recode ourselves to hold as our values
love, peace, justice, hope……………it is hard to rewrite our coding, but the
people who have counted for something, Gandhi and Jesus and MLK
and Mohammed have all given us the tools to overcome our evolutionary coding…

it is easy to just say, no, I can’t overcome my genetic coding and I will simply
be what my codes say I am to be… but the great ones have shown us
the way to overcome our base coding, the way to be more then just a
another determined (genetically) animal…to be human, to be fully human
we have to rise above our genetic and evolutionary coding………

that is the path to being human… rising above our genetic coding……

and we see by following our genetic coding of greed and lust and anger,
we have damage both ourselves and our environment… to overcome the
damage we have done to both ourselves and our environment, we must
rise above our coding and become who we are, not just animals that follow
our genetic coding, but human beings that is matter and energy and all that
that means… which is we accept our place in the universe as part of the
great universe, not as beings with ownership of the universe, but as
fellow participants with our brothers and sisters of matter and energy which
is everything in the universe……. we are not above or below the universe
of matter and energy, but we stand part of and united with the universe of
matter and energy…

Kropotkin