a new understanding of today, time and space.

i dunno what to tell ya, man, so i’ll just drop a quote that can move mountains if you understand how and why it is so powerful:

“The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem.” - wittgenstein

now ya can’t do this until you have an understanding of what language is doing in philosophy, and ya can’t know this until you let go of philosophy. this is what W meant when he posed the problem of getting beyond the limits of language in order to be able to see where those limits are. we have to accept that some things are ‘unspeakable’ on that account, and this is largely what philosophy tries to do; declare that it is able to be clear about what it attempts to do, without being able to get beyond itself and identify what can be clearly said.

i say simplify… but that’s the anarchist-nihilist in me speaking after having spent twenty years traversing the maze of philosophy. if you want a simple thinker who you can trust, see maximus stirner. and in fact, it was W who led me to stirner after i watched him systematically strip philosophy of everything it was worth. i was that fly in the bottle that W showed the way out.

yeah so there are no ‘isms’. these things are spooks in your head. we have a positively charged void that we call a universe, and things move and bump around in this void, and that’s the whole story. elegantly simple, yes? it’s no mystery why democritus laughed and heraclitus cried; democritus wasn’t a philosopher… heraclitus was.

vanish the problem of life, krackpotkin. vanish it, and cry no more!

ninja smoke bomb

I understand what you are saying Promethean…

let us continue: let us reevaluate this…

we have both humans and life having the same needs and desires
and wants… as programed by evolution… for that is what evolution
is, a program listed in our DNA……

we, humans and life, must have food, water, shelter, and education and procreation …
we humans, because of our complexity have a complex education system
but animals too educate their young, lions educate young lions
and dogs educated dogs to be dogs and some life like tree’s are
already programed by evolution to be tree’s

we cannot achieve our program that has been programed into us alone…
that is a basic fact of life, we cannot get our basics of life without
assistance from society… we cannot acquire food or shelter or an education
without society… that is what is meant to be dependent upon society, the polis…
we achieve such basic drives as demanded by evolution and we have no control over this…

so how do we achieve this? the answer is not within the ism’s and ideologies
of our life… we can achieve this without recourse to ism’s and ideologies…
without recourse to some dehumanizing, nihilistic ism……

but Kropotkin, how do we achieve our goals without some ism like
capitalism which forces people to do the dirty work of society for
little pay and even less status…… we recognize that society is the
only way for to become human, fully human and so, we help society
to be able to aid us in becoming human by aiding society…

what exactly does that mean?

One day a week or once every two weeks, we take on the ugly jobs
of civilization… we sweep the streets, we can be the policemen of society,
we become the agents of the society needs by playing a role within that society…

as some people are for whatever reason, unable to act in certain roles…
as I am hard of hearing, I cannot be a airplane controller, you need to hear
to do that, but I can do other roles within society… and that is what is important……

as Marx pointed out, to be a farmer in the morning and to be a policeman
in the afternoon… for one day a week and given our current population…
even one day every two weeks or possible one day every month… but we
can do the roles necessary for society to exist, to do the dirty jobs in return
we get the essentials of life, food, water, shelter, education, the ability to
procreate… and we also get to engage in the personal quest we have to
become ourselves…… but this means we must not engage in the
ism’s and ideologies that demand us to be certain roles and it is within
these dehumanizing and negation of who we are, that must be fought…

the goal is no longer personal covetousness that marks modern society today,
the goal is no longer the accumulation of materials such as property or wealth,
but in achieving personal goals such as going from 4:58 to 4:50… this
but we need society to achieve our personal goals, we cannot survive without
society…that is a statement of fact…

and so in return to our being able to achieve our personal goals,
we must return to society enough of our time and goods that
allow society can provide to us the security and ability to reach our goals…

we achieve our goals by aiding society in reaching its goals…

we are not subject to society and society isn’t subject of us…
we are simply partners in a mutual achievable goal of
reaching a point where we can help each other achieve our
respective goals…

we give up and in return society gives us the ability to achieve
our personal goals……. but we cannot achieve our goals if
only a few people have 90 percent of all the wealth in the world…
that is not sustainable and certainly doesn’t put us in a position to
reach our personal goals……… we must reevaluate what it means
to be a part of society…….

we must once again, work within what we really need as
human beings… we really only need certain things…
food, clothes, shelter, education, the ability to procreate…
the reality is, that human needs are really quite simple…
but we cannot include the rampant materialism of today…
that isn’t one of the basic needs of human beings and by
reducing, we can then achieve something far more important
then just a new couch or a new car or a new TV… For they
aren’t necessary, they are simply part of an addiction we have
to greed…

we must rethink what is the goal of human beings…
is materialism really a necessary for human beings?

NO, most definitely not……. but then what is important?
the necessity of life… food, water, shelter, clothes…….

and so, we can achieve the basics, we must reject the
current addictions we have to materialism, to goods…

and after that, we can find meaning without recourse to any
ism or ideology……. simplify our lives by removing the all that
garbage we have collected in ism’s and ideologies……

return to the basics…………and find meaning within
our own personal objective of engaging in what is important to us…

by finding our own personal meaning or goal within the confines
of achievable goals that can only happen without the
nihilism of ism’s and ideologies……

Kropotkin

For those who argue that everything is fine and nothing needs
to be changed, I point out that we have millions on the edge of starvation
and millions more two paychecks away from being homeless and we have
a massive addiction problem in this country…… all of this seems to suggest
that our problems aren’t just individual, single issues… but that the issues
we have stem from a system wide failure… that the issues we have are the result
of the nihilism that exists because of the political and economic system that
negates and leaves people without any say over their lives or any control
over their lives… the apathy in this country is also a result of people
being denied any control over their lives………… via ism’s and ideologies like
capitalism and religions like catholocism and the political via representative
democracy which only represents those who can afford it…

we often blames individuals for their individuals problems and yet,
we clearly have systems, both political and economic that negate
and dehumanize human beings and their values…and those systems
inpact upon our lives cannot be denied…a CEO in New York decides to
cut cost by eliminating 10,000 jobs and people due to forces beyond their
control and without having any say in the matter lose their jobs…
and the invisible hand of god proclaimed by Mr. Smith, that hand sweep
people into poverty and despair… but it wasn’t the hand of god, it was
the greed of the CEO… when will we blame the person who committed
this act of greed?.. it was man, a human being who caused despair
and confusion and anger to those who lost their jobs… but it was
the system that allowed the CEO to cut those jobs and send those people
into a bleak future…because the CEO can blame the rising cost
of workers to cause the downturn in his business… but here again,
we see workers sacraficed to the alter of mammon, to the alter of
profits/money…when will we put human beings ahead of profits/money?

And capitalism role in all this is to give the CEO cover to send thousands
into despair…

and how exactly does this concept of living without ism’s or ideologies
help this?

if we no longer live with ism’s or ideologies, as a practical matter,
how are we to make judgments?

If we walk away from ism’s and ideologies and prejudices and superstitions,
all the childhood indoctrinations, how do we engage with morality?

The question of Morality isn’t really rocket science… we can engage
with morality with values… I would treat someone differently if I
engage with that person with the higher, more human values of love,
justice, hope, peace, charity, humility or one of the hundreds of higher
values that exists……… if we treat people with justice for example, that
means we treat people equally, we are fair to people……
Justice means equality…or if we treat people with kindness…
we no longer have ism’s or ideologies dictate our actions, but we use
values…… using the higher values tells me that sexual relations with minors
is wrong because they are unable to defend themselves from adult predators…
but we can flip the argument… we can argue against people being predators
against children because those same predators would object to being the
object of another predator as children…….or people who would
murder others would object to being murdered themselves………

we can state that if people will not agree being the victims of
predators themselves, they cannot somehow state that being a victim
is somehow right or just……… if you steal, then you agree to the fact
people can steal from you……. the conclusion of this is that
people will treat others as well as they want to be treated…

this is one possible way to understand “morals”…

how do you want to be treated? that would suggest to us that
morals is simply a means of understanding how we should act toward
others… because what if that act or action were directed to us?

which leads us to another question?

for the higher morals to be achieved, we must become aware of
and have compassion for others………. it is easy to be an asshole if
we don’t “see” others as human beings… to many people go through
life seeing only their needs, wants and desires… traveling through life
as if they were the only people that existed in that life…………

this awareness of others is fundamental in our awareness of
morality… it takes two to tango as it were………

how can we lose a sense of other people in this existence?

it is easy when we make as our primary goal, materialism and
the pursuit of profits/money…if we place materialism and profits
first, then we lose sight of people and their values, this
pursuit of an ism or ideology allows us to neglect or negate
other people…

people are used in the engagement with the lower values of greed
and lust and envy… whereas if we engage with the higher values,
we treat people as we ourselves would want to be treated…

Ah the philosophical among us would say, you are talking about Kantian
ethics, but Kant would make it a duty for us to treat people ethically,
and it is not a duty, it is an awareness of others as human beings with
the needs and wants and desires as we have needs and wants and desires…

in other words, we see other people as we see ourselves……
within the equality that people need and deserve…
it is a viewpoint that understands people as being our equals,
if we treat people with equality/justice, we treat them morally…

if you want a “moral” society, then we must begin by seeing others
as being equal to ourselves, not higher or lower, but equal……

the process of morality begins once we see others as we see ourselves……

am I first in the universe? no, I am simply equal to everyone else and
this equality means I treat others as I would treat myself, as I would want
to be treated…morality begins once we see others, once we become
aware of the equality of other people………

now with that said, we can be sure that many will not begin this
process of treating or becoming aware of others… never underestimate
the solipsism of people… the only thing a lot of people are aware of
is themselves… they have no idea others even exists in the universe…
others who are valid, equal human beings just as we are………

“I think therefor I am” is not only a philosophical theory, but
it is the starting point of those who can only envision their needs,
their wants and their desires before, indeed being the only people
on planet earth with needs and desires and wants… you see many people
who have no vision of others, “I think therefore I am” is all they see…
their viewpoint doesn’t allow for the existence of other people as people…
as living, breathing people who needs and wants and desires equal their own……

solipsism allows us to negate all others as being less or nonexistent in value to us……
and what is the dominant viewpoint of capitalism? the idea that my needs
and wants outweigh your needs and your wants… that regardless of the
consequences to our society, I must engage with materialistic behavior…
for I am the only one, the only person who matters in the universe………
and capitalism is the perfect ism for those who practice solipsism……

but how do we exist without these ism’s?

we begin with the understanding that others are us, in fact,
there is no such thing as others, there is only us… morality
begins once we see that “others” is really us… how would we act
if the situation, any situation, were to be us… we no longer see
our acting upon others, we see others acting the same way to us……
and how would we feel if others treated us any differently then we
treated them?

the beginning of morality is once we see and become aware of
the fact that others want to be treated equally as we treat ourselves…

Kropotkin

Actually, it’s just the opposite of a rabbit hole. If by rabbit hole you meant “to enter into a situation or begin a process or journey that is particularly strange, problematic, difficult, complex, or chaotic, especially one that becomes increasingly so as it develops or unfolds.”

The hole that I am in is derived instead from construing it to be an entirely reasonable way in which to think about value judgments in conflict.

Solutions are ever evolving points of view wrapped around particular sets of political prejudices yanked from the life that you live. Sure, you can convince yourself that after “moving on” a solution will present itself, but it is no less entangled in “I” given the manner in which I describe it above. In other words, those who embrace opposite values can have “moved on” as well and seen the “solution” as entirely contrary to yours.

There does not appear [to me] to be a way to resolve this philosophically. Just the opposite. The manner in which I construe “being rational” here has become synonymous with being in the hole.

It’s the way in which I react to how reasonable this seems to me that precipitates this sense of being “fractured and fragmented” when confronting moral and political conflicts. Otherwise, like everyone else in the either/or world, I am on solid ground.

As a pragmatist, I don’t exclude anything. But the process of elimination is no less entangled [for me] in “I” as “for all practical purposes” an existential contraption. You eliminate all the possibilities and react to Trump’s policies as you do, while those on the other end of the political spectrum, have done exactly the same thing and arrived at theirs. But: to what extent is one of you actually closer to the solution? For me, there is no “the solution”, there are only solutions that individuals have come to be predisposed towards given the life that they have lived. In a No God world, there is no one to take the conflicts to forthe solution”.

Yes, this works where there is an actual accumulation of facts to solve the crime. Like a bank robbery. But suppose abortion is construed to be the crime. Suppose the folks in Trumpland want to make it a capital crime. Then from my point of view it’s back to the hole. Your understanding of what is important or unimportant to take into consideration here is an existential assessment. The Trump folks have an entirely different set of assumptions.

Yes, I understand what you are telling me here, but we do not connect the dots between “I” and “value judgments” in the same way. What you deem to be growth is seen by me to be that which your lived life has predisposed you toward. Just as those in Trumpworld construe growth to be the opposite behaviors.

You can all agree on certain facts in any particular context, but you react to those facts [re abortion or immigration policy or gun control or the role of government] in very different ways. The objectivists all insist that only their own reactions arethe solution”.

But [in my view] it is in believing this that motivates them by and large.

I hope to continue on and while doing so, speak to Iam concerns……

it is a bit complicated and complicated by its very nature is confusing…

I am a sole individual… my aim is to survive as best I can…

any “solutions” I discover for me, are by definition, my solution…
so, when faced with the discovery that my attempt to rise through
the corporate world, was ego driven and doomed to failure… I
no longer took that path… I simply tried to have jobs that allowed me
time to think and read and write…for those things are what important to me…
thus my solution was to my problem, I wasn’t interested in making money or
rising through the corporate ranks to get a “title”… that had no interest for me…
(granted, given my attitude toward corporate America, I had little chance of going
anywhere in the corporate world) but given that, I had to find a solution the
ongoing problem of making enough money while still leaving me time to engage
with what matter most to me… now that was my solution to my problem,
for many, indeed most people that particular solution wouldn’t have worked
for their problem… I am not engaged in finding specific solutions for specific people…

I have a different task, one that involves understanding our possibilities and
and thus present the case for being human as being one, ONE, possibility
for people to aim for… I am just laying out possibilities for people to
consider… and that is certainly isn’t meant to suggest that there is one solution
for all problems… hardly… our answers must work with our current situation…
I am 60… and as such, solutions that were useful when I was 6 or 16 or 26
or 46, are not longer useful… any solutions must be able to adapt to
my current situation… I can no longer hope to “become” anything useful
in society…I can not hold any other job outside of checker or management…
and management is no longer a solution as it sucks me even further into
the nihilism of capitalism…… I have no solutions for my situations involving
work or a career… the only solutions left to me is retirement or death…

but that “solution” does not work for those who have more possibilities
then I do… one solution for one person doesn’t mean it works for
people or even anyone in particular… it is simply one solution for
one person…… but we have to understand that my individual problem,
and my individual solution does have universal context because
because I stand as one of millions of baby boomers who are facing
the exact same choices as I do………there is a universal context for
human beings and their problems because even though problems
might be an individual problem, still we humans because we are human
still face these problems… we have individual choice in our solutions
but the problems are of a universal nature… I am going to die at some point…
that “problem” never bothered me when I was younger, it was so far away…
but today, the problem of death is staring me in the face… my mortality
isn’t some vague or abstract issue… I write with some urgency because
I can never be sure if my latest words will become my last words…
this is an urgency I have never felt before… it is an “old” person problem…
and my solution might work for some because we human are born and live
and die with many of the same issues that plagued previous generations and
plague us “moderns”… individual solutions have a universal impact because
we humans are by the forces that dominate us, nature in the guise of
evolution and gravity and social forces like capitalism and communism…
I too am searching for some measure of freedom against these forces…
that search is of a universal search… individually I exist within the universal…

any “answers” I find to my problems are within the context of those forces
that have dictated terms to me… evolution has forced me to exist within
certain boundaries, boundaries I cannot escape… I must eat and I must have
water and I must die and I must have air… any solutions I find, must
operate within the confines of these forces that have determined who we are…
and have to a great extent, determined what are our possibilities……
I cannot fly like a bird… that is evolution limiting my possibilities……
I cannot exist in a capitalistic society and work outside of the forces
of capitalism, I cannot work in a situation where profit is not the dominant
factor… the universal of capitalism decides my possibilities so my
“solution” to the universal of capitalism is my solution and it may not work
for anyone else, but it is a solution that others in their individual actions
within a universal context…

I am one, an individual but I also exist within a universal context
of social, political, economic structures which are also bound
by the forces of nature, gravity and evolution for example……

and how do we find freedom in the midst of all these tightly held
forces that determine and shape us? My solution is just that, but
you and I, we live and breath within a universal context that
has existed for a very, very long time before we were born…

any individual solution to any individual problem still lies within
a universal context, for I exist within a universal context of society
and the state and nature and the religious and all the other forces
that exist……………

I think what it means to be a “modern” is to finally realize what
the universal context really means and how do we find freedom
given the universal context which controls virtually every aspect of our lives…

so given this, I see abortion as a way to discover freedom…
if women are forced to give birth to children they don’t want,
where is the freedom for the woman? taken away by a universal context
where only one solution exists for all situations, the one solution is to
force women to give birth regardless of the situation… there is no freedom
here, only coercion by the state to its individual members, to force them to
give birth no matter what the circumstances…so women must find the
individual context to their universal problem… in which one possible solution is
contraceptives and another is the morning after pill… the individual solution
is given within the context of the universal problem………

this is one example of individual problems and solutions that are
within a universal context……….

Kropotkin

let us try this:

ask yourself, why did you go to school? what was the reason you went to
school? well elementary school, we had no choice. It was not an option to
do something else but go to school… so, why did you go to high school?
For most, it is not an option… when ask, most people would say they
went to high school because it was the only way to get to college…
so why go to college? because if you want a good paying job or a career,
you went to collage… at some point do you ask, is there some other option
besides college? well, you can go to work in some job… but the end result is
still the same, a job, a career…let us say you want to heal people,
and you spend years in school becoming a doctor… and being a doctor
is still a job, a career…

every path we take still takes us to the same place, a job, a career…
where we spend decades working and for what? ask yourself, why am
I working for 40 years? to be able to retire? logically, it doesn’t make sense
to work for 40 years to just be able to retire… and then live a fairly short time
afterwards, say we retire at 65… the statistics suggest that the average male in
America today will pass away at 76… thus we are only able to retire for 11 years
before we die… this is course statistics and meant for a large number of people,
not an individual like yourself…and we have other issues, I am 60 and I already
have some health issues that will affect my old age… back and hip and knees
problems that really affect my quality of life… what will it look like at 70 or 76?

so, I am suppose to spend 40 years working then spend 11 years in retirement,
quite often in ill health… that doesn’t seem to be fair or right.
But Kropotkin, that’s the way it is… that the way it has always been,
why fight what has “worked” for generations………….I have worked
for 43 years and I still can’t see the point… what to feed myself and my
family. I spend 40 years in the bondage of a system that exploits me
and abuses me and for what? a few bucks in the bank that supposed to last
11 years before I die. it makes no sense from an individual standpoint to
endure 40 years of enslavement to have 11 years of ill health before I die…

why would any sane person go through that?

but Kropotkin, that’s the system… yes, that is the system…
the universal context that everyone must go through…
our individual context may differ, but our universal context
is the same for everyone…… but is that true?

it has been estimated that people in the middle ages, medieval man
had more leisure time then we “Modern” people do……….and the numbers suggest
that the numbers aren’t even that close…the “average” medieval person worked
about 150 days a year, while they were off roughly 215 days… or roughly the
average person had half the year off… I had three weeks off last year…
plus given days off… and add up the number of working days for us moderns,
roughly 260 and that there are roughly 104 weekends…so, including vacations,
I worked roughly 239 days last year…so in my 40 years, I worked roughly 9,560 days…
and recall, I have been working for 43 years, and in 76 years are 27,740 days…
so, I spend more then a third of my entire life working… and you sleep roughly
25 years of your life or 9,125 days…so that is another third of your life…
so two thirds of your life is accounted for between work and sleep…….

so when can Kropotkin become who he is if he is spending roughly
two thirds of his life either sleeping or working……

questions to ask when wondering about the meaning of life…

Kropotkin

All I can say Krokoptln at this point is to repeat the wisest thing anyone said to me, my philosophy prof. “Don’t compare”.

hang in there… I am trying to assemble thoughts into
some coherent pattern…

we have a loss of religious judgments… for a thousand years
judgements was based on a religious consideration…you are acting
immoral based upon religious considerations… but our modern age has
repudiated that understanding… we no longer judge based on religious
grounds, in a religious context… we have secularized judgements…
we feel that moral issues such as homosexuality and aberrant
behavior have a secular basis… but we have found that homosexuality,
for example, cannot be judge to be “harmful” or “dangerous” or “sinful” outside
of a religious context… given our secular nature and secular judgements,
we have, upon purely secular reasons, to allow such “sinful” actions as
homosexuality and drug use…

So, we judge actions based on a secular reasons, not religious…

we have social, economic and political structures, ism’s as it were…
I believe, not on a religious basis, but on a secular basis that
ism’s such as capitalism and communism should be judged
as we would judge “Moral” behavior…think about it…

we see a couple fucking on a park bench and we would make a
moral judgement… and call the police… and we can make individual
moral judgements on individuals… I see a man beating a woman
and I make a judgement about that action, a moral judgement…

but can we hold groups and corporations and even a society by the same
judgement as we would hold an individual accountable?

In New York, a CEO see’s the books going into the red and so he
decides to fire 10,000 people… it isn’t anything personal, it is
this “hand of god” in economics that make this judgement
and the CEO is simply the acting agent of the “hand of god”…

now in the eyes of conservatives, this action, this economic
decision to increase profits has no moral judgement… it is
not a moral statement or judgement… it is a impersonal, objective,
dispassionate judgement which has no moral implications because
the judgement is so impersonal, “lay off 10,000 people to increase
our profit margins”. How can that be judged morally?

it is an act that is justice because it is done equally without regard to
any accidental properties like race or gender or the color of a person’s skin…
and we demand justice to be equal and there is nothing more equal then
laying off 10,000 people regardless of their status……

it is an institutional, group decision done for the best of the group…

and as such, it lies outside of our moral judgments… it cannot be judge
based on such moral decisions that we would use on individuals as the one’s
making out on a public bench…there is no good or evil based on this
decision of laying off 10,000 people… it is simply good business
and good business is not judge on any criteria of morality…
good business has only one criteria, to make money…that is
how we are suppose to judge business, based on profits/money, not
on moral judgments……… but we have an issue and we have discussed
time and time again, the judgement of business based solely profits is
the negation, the dehumanization of human beings and their values…
business has made the gaining of capital more important and more
vital then the health and safety of both customers and workers…

if we practice the nihilism of business and put money/profits over
human beings and their values, then the laying off of 10,000 workers
to increase profits is clearly nihilism… the practice of making
profits more important then customers and/or workers………

and based on this idea, we can judge as immoral the business
practices that allows business to value profits/money over
human beings, customers/workers…businesses do not escape
moral judgement because their decision claims to be objective,
impersonal, dispassionate… those businesses practices are
nihilistic and must be viewed that way…

if the act of acquiring money/material goods is to be view as nihilistic,
then then the entire capitalistic system is nihilistic because the entire
system is predicated upon the acquisition of profits/money… yep, the
entire system is nihilistic because the entire system depends upon the
negation and dehumanization of human beings in order to make profits.

and we can judge the entire capitalistic system based upon this nihilism…

and liberals have judge the entire system as being negative, wrong,
damaging……. and conservatives do not believe that… for conservatives, corporations
and businesses operate within the “hand of god” thus ensuring corporations will do
the right thing and the “impartiality” of the system will help
corporations do the “right” thing…

but how can businesses do the “right” thing if they are nihilistic and
pursue profits over people?

so how do you judge businesses and corporations? are they to be judge
morally? Can they be judge morally?

Kropotkin

not many see existence as being a problem or an issue…

but understood correctly, existence is a problem and the
Kantian/Kropotkin questions explore those problems of
existence…What am I to do? Are my childhood indoctrinations
really the values I want to act upon? What values should I have?
What can I hope for? What should I spend my energy on?

I exist and that very existence forces me to try to understand what
I am to do for my 70 or so years of existence. What should I believe in?
What values should I hold? Should I simply adapt the values I was
indoctrinated with as a child or should I attempt to discover values
that reflect who I am and what I believe in. Part of this question of
existence is this question of ism’s and ideologies.

If I discover that the society choice of an economic ism is nihilistic,
what can I do about it and even if I should do anything about it…
what are my options to fight an nihilistic and destructive economic
system which has corrupted the political system and thus we face the
frightening prospect of having a political tyranny and an economic
tyranny… and this is what is meant by a “modern” society… we
are forced for the first time in history to become aware of the
economic tyranny that exists in the world today…political tyranny
has always existed and will always exist but an economic tyranny?
that is purely a “modern” state of affairs…

So faced with this duel tyranny, what am I to do?
where do I find freedom in a world that has multiple forces
dominating its individuals? We are held captive by natural forces
such as evolution and gravity and we are held captive by social,
political and economic forces too. so this question of finding freedom
in the modern world becomes another Kantian/Kropotkin question
of existence… How do I find freedom in a world that is determined to
dominate you and forces you to play a role within the various systems
regardless if you have agreed or not… Capitalism doesn’t require nor
ask for permission to act… it just does…our representative democracy
which is beholden to those who can buy it, no longer listens or cares
about what you desire or want or need… our democracy just doesn’t care…

so I am faced with this question of existence, of finding freedom in a world
that has already taken your freedom away. if there is no choice, there is no
freedom… and how many choices do you have right now, today? very, very few…

can you walk away from this modern tyranny of the political and the tyranny of
the economic?

No, no you can’t. you have bills and property and cars and student loans
and a family… all those things that tie you down to, forces you to accept
the current tyranny because you have no other choice…where can you go
that is an escape from the modern tyranny/nihilism of capitalism?

the modern industrial world is the home of the economic and political
tyranny…… where would you go to escape our modern tyranny? Maybe
Africa or perhaps parts of Asia… but the number of places where one can
escape too is small and growing smaller every day…….

If one cannot escape, then you have but two choices, accept or fight…
and my choice is clear. What is your choice about your existence?

what will you do? What can you do? acceptance or fight.

Kropotkin

one response to existence is ART…

we use ART to explain and understand existence…

for one of the possibilities of existence is the act of expression…

we can express our nature, our feelings, our possibilities within the
act of expression which is ART…

I can paint a picture and it can serve many different, diverse
functions or roles within my life or the life of others……

one possibility in the course of our existence is to think about existence…

thinkers, philosophers, theologians have all thought about what
existence can mean individually and collectively, but artist can
also express what existence means by their art…………

ART is simply another example of the possibilities within existence…

Kropotkin

This question of existence varies and changes with the person
asking it… a person who lived 35,000 years ago has different
questions about existence then someone who lived in the
Greek city of Athens around 425 BC and someone who lived
during the medieval age understanding of existence is far
different then my understanding of existence in this year of 2019…

the question of existence is different in the stone age then it is
now because the environment is different. The stone age person question
of existence was about survival… the question of existence was far more
basic then the questions of existence I face now…The stone age man
was directly involved in the procurement of the substance that keep them
alive… if he wanted to eat, he had to hunt and kill the animal that
would have fed him…his mate would have gone out and hunted for
berries or other things needed to eat…the question of existence
was directly in front of them… engage like an animal or die…
but think about the limitations of these stone age people……
their limitations are contained by their environment……
they had limited choices in what they could do…….
basically being a hunter was the choice for
men… how many other roles could men play?
As ART was just beginning, that was becoming a possibility
for people to engage in……. it wasn’t all about the search
for food to eat…another possibility existed… the creation of Art…
this hunter gatherer environment lasted for hundreds of thousands of years…

we traveled with the animals we used for food so we could survive…
humans lead a nomadic existence…civilization simply wasn’t possible
until humans could stay in one place and still survive… not until
humans began the agriculture society could human beings could engage
with civilization as we know it……

in the stone age, the possibilities were limited… one could become a hunter,
one could be the one who made the tools needed by the hunters, one
could be the one who cooked and cleaned and keep the camp where they
lived organized…the very possibilities for being human were limited…

think about the possibilities of the Greek human being circa, 425 BC…
What choices were available for human beings? they were far greater
then the stone age man… you could be a stone mason or a priest or
a warrior or a playwright or a politician or a philosopher or a farmer… one of the
many possibilities that existed for the Greek person who lived around 425 BC…

in the Greek world existed far more possibilities for human beings to act upon
then existed in the stone age world… the Medieval world had less possibilities…
the possibilities that existed for someone in the medieval world were warrior
and priest and farmer… because in the medieval world, the possibilities of
the city were far less then in the Greek world because the cities were fairly
small… it is estimated that around 1328 AD, Paris for example had roughly 200,000 people…
and the numbers of people for Paris say, around 800 AD would have been much smaller…

The growth in the city created greater possibilities for human beings…
In 1328 Paris, Humans can be builders and priest and stone cutters and
the thousand different possibilities that existed in 1328 Paris

think of today… how many possibilities exist for us? there are quite
literally hundreds of thousands of possibilities for us today from writer to
warrior to waiter to welder to washroom attendant……… and that is the W’s…

but is our existence defined by what we do? does being a warrior, a soldier,
define my existence, define who I am?

I am born and I, hopefully, will exists for 70 plus years… does being
a soldier define that life I hope to lead? It seems to me that we define
who we are by our choices…I will live for 70 years and the choices I make
over those 70 years, defines who I am…and among those choices we make
that define us, is our choice of values……. we are indoctrinated in childhood
to hold certain values which family/society wishes to pass on to the next
generation, but are those values worth passing on?

inherent in our possibilities is our possibility for choices…
but those choices we make, must make sense given the
environment we find ourselves in…as our environment
changes, our choices change and the possibilities of choices
change…… if I find myself in a country that is at war, my choices
must adapt to the fact that the country is at war…….

If my environment is violent and chaotic, then my choices
must reflect that fact…if I lived in the stone age period,
given the limited nature of choices, I have very little choice as
to the nature of my existence…as to what possibilities existed for me…

given the nature of the current existence we find ourselves in today,
we have only certain possibilities available to us…the environment
dictates to us our possibilities……….

if the question of human existence is to explore the possibilities available
to us, then we must create the greatest number of choices that is available
to us……. but as I have noted before, we are limited by forces beyond
our control to be able to create the greatest number of choices possible…

we cannot escape the forces, both natural and manmade, the forces
of gravity and the force of evolution are two such forces that limited
our choices… we cannot go beyond our genetic programming
to be able to breath like fish under water or to fly like birds in the air…
we are limited in this fashion…we are also limited by the
manmade possibilities, the forces of man’s choice…
the ism’s and ideologies that control our lives, limit our choices…

these questions of existence, what am I to do? what should I believe in?
what should I hope for? what values should I hold? what can I live for, die for?

all these choices, possibilities are limited by the environment…

what am I to do for the 70 years of my existence?

but for me the question changes… I have roughly 15 years of existence left
to me… what should I do in the next 15 years of my existence?
and as important as to what should I do, I must ask, why? why should
I pick this possibility over other possibilities? every day is a multitude of choices,
of possibilities, I can choose not to go to work at 12:30… and risk getting fired
and having a very, very, very unhappy wife…it is a possibility not to go to work,
but the results aren’t that desirable…so what possibilities exist for me,
both today and over the next 15 years? that is the question.

Kropotkin

and it is this question of possibilities that we try to understand…

is it possible for me to act “morally” of course, but then it becomes
a question of what “moral” means in terms of our possibilities…

I am born into a world, Tabula rasa, a blank slate as it were…
and so society fills up that blank slate with myths, prejudices, superstitions,
biases of that society… there is a god… a bias of a society… why would I say that?
given the nature of the various religions, they seem to have answer for same needs
that human beings have… why am I here? what is the meaning/purpose of life?
what am I to do? What should I hope for? we can see various religious
answers in this list. why am I here? to worship god… what is the meaning/purpose
of life? to worship god and get to heaven… to find “salvation”, to be saved,
by doing X, Y and Z……… of course the question left unsaid is, why do we need
to saved? What exactly are we being saved from? Or what is the point of being saved?
and different religions have different answers to the question of how to be saved…

The Buddhist believed to be saved, one must escape the continuous reincarnation
that entraps all of us… but again, the question left unsaid is, why is it so important
to escape reincarnation? I can think of worse things then being reincarnated over and
over again……. for example, spending eternity in heaven worshiping god… yikes,
what a fucking nightmare or spending eternity in hell, to be honest, eternity in
hell sounds better then a eternity in heaven…….

the question asked in religion is simple, how are we to be saved?

and I for one, don’t believe in that question. I believe in other questions,
that I have raised over and over again in this thread…….

does that make me or religions wrong? nope, just asking different questions…

so how am I to spend my 70 years of existence if I eliminate religious
questions from the mix? UMMMMMMM……… how are we to find meaning
in a universe without a god? that was Nietzsche question… and so we return
to philosophy…

what are my possibilities if we eliminate religion from this question
of, what are my possibilities in my 70 years of existence?

How do we find the “secular” answers to this question of, what are my
possibilities during my 70 years? or as Nietzsche stated, how do I find meaning
in a world without god? in what possibilities I have, do I find meaning?
Doing what actions will bring me close to the answer of finding my
meaning/purpose in life? or even more basic, I ask, can I find meaning/purpose
in life given the possibilities that exist right now?

ask the stone age man and given his possibilities, the answer to that meaning
question is different then for me because the environment for both of us
is different and our question of possibilities changes with the different
environments……

thus we can change the question of our possibilities with our choices…
but what choices should we make that will influence our possibilities?

and I have stated that by pursuing the positive, the higher possibilities of
being human, changes the possibilities for all human beings……

in other words, the values we choose changes the possibilities we have…

the higher values gives us more possibilities then choosing the lower values…

values like justice, hope, love, peace give us greater possibilities then
anger, hate, lust, greed…… the creative values create greater possibilities
for us…………

Kropotkin

I woke up today exhausted from the last several days of work…
Last night I was so sore I could barely move… I couldn’t even sleep
I was so sore…

I had today off and I finally feel good enough to write…

and I ask myself, how did I get here?

I have a job I completely hate and with no way to escape it, outside
of homelessness and starvation…I cannot retire and I cannot go back…

I was born… and in that birth presented certain possibilities…

I am now 60 and those possibilities have all been exhausted…

looking back, I see choices, paths taken and not taken…

but in looking at my choices, I see something else…

I see those choices not really being my choice, but being the
possibilities allowed by society… I could have gone to collage,
but that is another choice given by society… as I have followed my life,
I followed the choices offered by society… I became a good citizen,
I worked a job, paid my taxes, got married, we own a couple of condo’s
and a house…we, my wife and I are solidly middle class home owners…

and at every step, I followed the course laid out by society… I didn’t question it,
I didn’t fight it, I simply followed the path allowed by society…

the only exception was my anarchist years, that several years where I didn’t do
what society told me that which was my role, my expectations, my obligations, my
responsibility…….

otherwise, I went to school, I got a job, I married… the well worn path
of adulthood… the path traversed by men since the beginning of time…

but today, today after I have no longer any chance to change my possibilities,
I question that path taken since the beginning of time… I question my path…

I question and I doubt and that is the beginning of wisdom……

I am trying to think of a suitable analogy for what is only a feeling in
my soul……….

society is like a play…… the fixtures and furniture are the same for
everyone… but as the play goes on, the actors change… we have a continuous
play going on but every generation a new cast takes over the play…
but the play itself, the plot remains the same and the actors have
to navigate a plot that has been going on for thousands of years…….

Goethe entered the play in in 1749 and left it in 1832…
He was a writer, a scientist, a poet but his roles in life,
varied as few people’s life ever varied, but he still existed within
the allowed possibilities of the play he was in……
His actions and writings never outgrew his societal
possibilities… the closes he came was with Faust…

Goethe stayed well within the boundaries of what is possible
for his society… as we are now well within the greater possibilities
of our “modern” society… but is playing roles, really exhaust our
possibilities… as long as I engage in what society wants, I am left
alone, as long as I fulfill the myths and prejudices and biases of
my society, be a good citizen, work hard, keep your nose to the grindstone,
create profits, increase our “Gross domestic product” and thereby
make America great… again… but really is that all that is possible?

to follow roles preestablished for us by society and
and approved by and for society……… we must find our
possibilities within the confines of social approved roles…

we cannot disrupt or disagree or challenge…

(recall the greatest crime of humans since the bible…insubordination…
we were tossed out of paradise for insubordination and in my union job,
I can only be fired for stealing and… yep, insubordination)

it is demanded of us that we comply… as children, listen to your mother or else,
listen to your teachers or else, listen to your boss or else……. listen to society or else…

we are trained since birth to comply to the demands of others
that is in fact the point of a good deal of our “education” as children…

we are forced to submit to the demands of others and we
are forced to play certain, given roles of society………

we can become doctors and lawyers and policemen and
actors and mechanics and society says, it is good, because
we can, society needs those roles played by people…
but don’t think outside of any roles we, society, doesn’t approve of…

I see people walking around with t-shirts and sweats saying,
one word, Obey……. and that is certainly the watchword of society,
Obey, follow traditions, never go outside of the possibilities we have
laid out for you………

and if you Obey, we might reward you with titles and a few bucks
and the gratitude of society… and I proclaim them to be lies, falsehoods,
traps…….to spend 40 years working for the sole benefit of those who own
the means of production is wasting our lives to benefit those own these things…

I engaged in the possibility of work and have spent 43 years working for corporations,
and I got nothing out of it… those were wasted years spent improving the wealth of
those who owned the corporations……. but I was a good citizen, I was a capital American
who believed in the lies of the possibilities they offered…those possibilities
are a shame meant to entrap one into spending a life working and benefiting those
who own the means of production………in all those years of working, did I improve
my possibilities? no, did I have any hope to become something besides a worker?

No, the lies I was told as a child was meant to entrap me into the role of worker
and producer and consumer… it had nothing to offer me but lies… the possibilities
of childhood is a lie…comply to the demands of a society in which you are nothing
more then cannon fodder… that was my possibility to fulfill…… and engaging in
any other role given by society still leads me back to becoming cannon fodder…
be it a baseball player or a doctor or a lawyer or a plumber… each role leads one
to having no possibilities outside of what is allowed by the society…… we cannot become
anything more then what the society wants to keep itself in business and then the
question arises……… have we reached the stage where we no longer need society
to entrap us into roles designed to keep us into slavery…………

the great possibilities of my youth are simply lies designed to keep me
in line and engage only as a worker, consumer, producer… we really only
see a few possibilities when understood by the lies of society and its need
to fool people into thinking that society/tradition is the only possible path
to us to engage with in regards to how we live our lives…… to find our possibilities
let us begin with the lies of the ism’s and ideologies we are taught as children
which are meant to enforce the lies of a society only interested in maintaining
itself and does not have any care about you… live or die… that is irrelevant
in our modern society because you individually don’t matter… you are
just another cog in the machine and as long as the machine continues
to work, you don’t matter…as long as the machine makes its owners
money, you don’t matter……. you are irrelevant and disposable…
I just don’t recall that possibility of being when I was growing up…
but that is the only being we have as “moderns” until we discover
our real possibilities, our real purpose for being…and the beginning is
to learn to exists without ism’s and ideologies that are meant to
place you within society needs… not yours…

what will make you special?

understanding what your real possibilities are…

outside of the lies of an society that couldn’t care less about you……

Kropotkin

The world is fake : both the material and the spiritual.
It runs upon cycles of death.
Earth is a bad planet.

K: ummmm, the world is only fake if you define the world as such…

I don’t comment upon the spiritual because seeing the spiritual,
the metaphysical in the world is to anthropomorphize the world…
seeing things that aren’t there…

as for the world running on cycles of death… recall the notion
of an equation…the universe itself has an equation, we just haven’t
found it yet, but we have other equations and this equation goes like this…

Life = death… it is a pretty simple equation as far as equations go,
but it is effective… the amount of life must be balanced by the amount
of death…for if one side of the equation becomes to lopsided, we have too much
life or too much death, we risk becoming too unbalanced and that is the path to
extinction… life must balance death…

is earth a “bad” planet? as the Earth is the only planet we can
compare and contrast, we cannot actually say if earth is a bad planet…
but the very idea of a “bad” planet is to anthropomorphize earth…
The earth isn’t good or bad, it simply is… and we make judgments
on the goodness or badness of it based on some criteria we have created,
and that criteria is artificially created……… we decide if something is good or
bad if it helps us, good, if it harms us, bad… usually it is just that simple…

rethink, reevaluate your terms and a completely different understanding of
the universe will happen… and that just means we see the universe through
colored glasses… and the colored glasses are the various ism’s and ideologies,
myths, biases, prejudices and superstitions we were indoctrinated with
as children…have you begun the path of reevaluation of values… which
really just means, have you thought if the values of your indoctrination
are really your values or have you just simple accepted those values as
yours even though they might not be… you just don’t know, do you?

are the values we have, really the values we believe in and the values
in which we are… if you are taught values of hate, anger, greed, indoctrinated
as it were, and those values are still your values, then you haven’t really gotten
anywhere, have you? you are still living values of your childhood, values of
your parents, society, media, the state…… what about your values?
what do you value? you don’t know because you haven’t discovered them…
you haven’t reevaluated your values to see if those indoctrinated values are
your values…….

to say, the earth is bad…is that your reevaluated values speaking or
is that the indoctrinated values speaking?

until you know, you don’t know……

Kropotkin

the Kantian/Kropotkin questions… what am I to do?
what should I believe in? what should I hope for?
what values should I hold? how does one find meaning?
How am I to be saved? In my 70 years, I have a certain amount
of energy, upon what should I spend that energy on?
what are my real values?

you have X number of years in your life… for most, it is 75 years…
and if you are not asking yourself these Kantian/Kropotkin questions,
then what are you doing?

Kropotkin

for me, right now… I am asking myself, what are my alternatives besides
playing the roles that society deems to be necessary?

To find my meaning in life, must I engage in an occupation like
firemen or lawyer or doctor, as society as deem it to be or do I find
my meaning outside of the economic roles society forces me to play…
I am not just a consumer or a producer or a worker…
I am Kropotkin…those roles don’t define who I am, as society
wants those roles to define me… I am more then just a worker…
I am a human being… being just a worker means I only have
value if I working, my meaning is found working for 40 years damaging my
body and crushing my soul and who exactly am I working for? sure the hell
isn’t me I am working for, for the entire capitalistic system demands I
work for less then what I am producing, in other words, I create 10 dollars
of economic value and the company pays me $5.00 and they pocket the
difference and my entire economic value is in the creation of that $ 5.00
of profit… my entire value lies in the creation of that $ 5.00 per hour of profit…
my existence has no other meaning, no other value then that…

no wonder people consider life to be cheap, according to capitalism,
life is cheap, $ 5.00 per hour profit cheap…

but I say no… no, my life has value beyond the creation of profit…
but to find that meaning, I must engage in those Kantian/Kropotkin
questions…How do I find meaning in a world where there is no
god…How do I find meaning in a world where my value is only as much
profit as I can create…once I fail to create profit, my value to society
ceases…is that what being a human being really means?
to only exists to create profit?

what am I to do? what should I believe in? what should I hope for?
what are my values? How am I to find meaning?

we can far better use our time to understand those questions of existence
instead of just creating profits which doesn’t profit us at all… for those profits
goes to those who own the means of production……

question the very basis of your life…… but beware of the journey…
for during the journey of understanding, the mountains will dance
and the sea’s become wild and ferocious and the river banks will
overflow…

but once the understanding has occurred, the mountains will
be solid and stable and the sea’s calm and peaceful and the river’s
will flow peacefully down to the sea…….

engage…… become human, fully human…

Kropotkin

This is all then elaborated further.

But, basically, it becomes my point. In order to understand [more substantively] what motivates someone and drives their intentions in the is/ought world of value judgments, you have to understand how their own life actually unfolded such that the particular variables embedded in their experiences, relationships and access to ideas predisposed them to think one way rather than another.

Existentially, you came to construe corporations and capitalism one way while the lives that others lived predisposed them to go in other directions instead.

Now suppose a particular liberal and a particular conservative come to recognize that. They begin to wonder if there is in fact a way to react to corporations and capitalism in the most rational and virtuous manner. Is it all just embedded in these “existential contraptions”?

So, sure, they can sit down, think it all through as thoroughly as they possibly can and come up with arguments like this: economicshelp.org/blog/5002 … apitalism/

Conflicting goods. So, extrude the part where “I” is fabricated and refabricated existentially in the life that you lived and pin down the optimal frame of mind.

Is this possible?

And that’s before we get to the part where the “show me the money” nihilists out there flush all that “conflicting goods” crap down the toilet and merely make the assumption that whatever they have come to believe furthers their own interests, is moral enough for them.

And, by and large, it is folks like this who run the global economy.

From my frame of mind, that which is true “universially” for all of us is embedded in the either/or world. In those things that we are able to demonstrate as in fact true objectively for all of us.

And, sure, with respect to the multitude of conflicting goods strewn throughout the is/ought world, there are certain sets of facts that can be established in regard to social, political and economic structures.

But, in my view, as soon as our reaction to those facts shifts the conversation from what is true to what we ought to do given what can be established as true, the points of view become increasingly more subjective. And subjunctive.

I on solid ground begins to reconfigure into “I” on shakier ground. Then it just becomes a matter how “fractured and fragmented” any particular “I” becomes. Me, I am down in my hole. So, I can only come into places like this and consider arguments that might reconfigure me again.

On the other hand, I have had any number of experiences in places like this where it actually turned out to be more the other way around. My argument begins to reconfigure the argument of others instead. And the reactions to that have been all over the board.

Thus this…

…becomes just another “general description” that, once brought down to earth like this…

…becomes just another subjective leap to a particular political prejudice rooted existentially in the life that you lived.

Freedom revolves entirely around the political right of women to choose abortion. Why? Because sans that right how can women ever hope to achieve gender equality with men in a world where only women become pregnant.

The freedom of the unborn embedded in what others deem to be a “natural right” to life is simply subordinated [politically] to the woman’s right to choose. The unborn have no choice in the matter. So many in the pro-choice ranks rationalize this by insisting that the unborn who are aborted are not really human beings at all.

And then on and on that particular argument about what is “in fact” true here is sustained into an indefinite future.

I am not ignoring you Iambiguous, I just have limited amount
of time today…

As existence creates its own questions, who am I? what am I to do?
what should I believe in? what should I hope for?..……

we understand life as a question of becoming…… in other words, I
am born a baby, what is my next becoming? why infant, then toddler,
the child, then teenager, then young adult…you see the ever present
becoming in growing up…

Today we are… tomorrow we will be…
but what will we be?

and that is the question of possibilities… every single human being is in
a state of flux, from being one thing to another, every minute is another
movement of being to becoming… to finding our possibilities…

but the problem in our going from being to becoming is we think in terms
of economics, of what should we do, in terms of a job or career or profession…
but that becoming is a small part of who we are… our possibilities are far
greater then simply what job should we have?..how do we support ourselves
has less significance then what should I become? the values we have and then
values we should have is another question of possibilities, of being to becoming…

we have these values, should we hold other values and why?
I am and I am becoming…….should be part of the question of existence
and the question of values is partly about this becoming…

what are my possibilities? I can become a doctor or a lawyer or
a cop or a politician or a checker in a grocery store but what other
possibilities exists for me, outside of what my job is?

for example, does being a checker preclude me from being a nice person,
a mean person, a loving person, a funny person…the search for
profits has devalued human values like justice, truth, love, peace and
hope… it doesn’t matter in my job if I am nice or kind or smart or
evil… as long as I make profits, that is my only value at work…
there are no other possibilities inherent in my job…

but how do I engage in finding my possibilities if my worth is
measured in terms of making profit? Let us take the political…

one man, one vote is the basic, fundamental principle of democracy,
but that principle has been subverted by money which has bought
our elected officials from main street to Pennsylvania ave in Washington DC…

Money has corrupted our entire electoral process, so how can I find my possibilities
given money has corrupted our entire political process?

and economically, the lie that anyone can “make” it given they work hard,
there is millions upon millions of people working hard, very, very hard and
they are still making minimal amount of money… for most Americans,
they are three paychecks from being homeless… how is that square with this
idea of working hard and “making it”? the average median income was $56,516…
and these people work very hard for that money… the mean household income
was roughly $79 thousand dollars a year…

(the median means the amount
which divides the income groups into two groups, half above that number
and half is below that number and the mean income is the amount
obtained by dividing the total aggregate income of a group by the number
of units within that group… so in the median income group… half of America
is below $56,516 and half is above that number, so roughly the monthly income
of those who are at $56,516 is $4,709… or roughly $1,200 a week and missing
three paychecks is roughly $3500… and that is the breaking point of most
Americans)

but there are other possibilities besides economically, what job should I have?
we can discover our possibilities in sports, ARTS, reading, writing, imagination,
and fantasy…what is needed is less focus on making our lives about
the creation of wealth/profits that never go to us, but go to those who
own the means of production…

there is nothing to be gained by the average person to engage in the
the economic system of America, capitalism… unless a lifetime of
working until the body collapses and the soul is crushed, really floats
your boat… then rock on…….

our possibilities isn’t found in the pursuit of wealth or profits,
our possibilities is found engaging in some action or event that
allows us to answer this question of being to becoming… we are
and what should we be… working 40 hours a week for 40 years
isn’t going to answer the question of becoming…what should we become…
the engagement with work only solves the question of, how am I going to eat?
How can I support my family? and that answer can be found in other ways,
other possibilities that lie outside of capitalism… for capitalism has
proven itself to be a failure and we must rethink our economic system…
which is another form of engaging in being to becoming…

what is more important, the GDP… the Gross domestic product or
finding the answer to the question, what are my possibilities?
and if you have to ask which one is more important, then
you are in clear need of an reevaluation of values…….

why is the need for goods we don’t need to survive outweighs
the question of what is really important in our lives?
we don’t need TV’s or fancy cars or nice couches for our fat asses to
survive, the basics necessities of life is really quite minimal,
and we can get to understanding what is our possibilities
without the lifetime engagement with capitalism that
destroys our soul and body………

that is why ART is so important because it tells us what possibilities exists
for us… we can become brave or strong or smart or loving, values that mean
something far greater then just our engagement with our job/work and
we can become those values through our engagement with ART…
we can see what is possible through ART… and we can see what is
possible through sports, where we can see how strong we are or how brave
we are or how we face adversity in sports tell us much about how we face
adversity in life…….

we must engage in those activities like ART and sports and travel
and learning because they push the being in us into becoming…
and we must, must make ART and sports and learning and travel to
a much higher level of our engagement in life… much more then
just work/the pursuit of profits… which doesn’t engage in
finding our possibilities that we must engage in…

what about our other possibilities, such as religion, philosophy,
history? more about that boys and girls later…

I must get ready to go to that body destroying/ soul crushing
job…

Kropotkin

so given the questions of existence, what am I to do?
what should I believe in? how should I act? what should I hope for?

Now these important questions of existence, questions we face once we are born,
these questions can be expanded to include us… what are we to do? what should we
believe in? How should we act? what should we hope for?

for example, the question of, how should we act? Is really a political and
moral question. the begining of political science begins with a question,

what is my relationship with others? we are individuals who live and die within
a complicated social context… I am born and I am faced with the question of
how do I act with my sisters and brother? our parents dictate our actions
and behavior we have with each other…and then we enter school
and we discover other complicated behaviors that our classmates have…
and all the while we have teachers who watch over us and dictate our
actions and behaviors we have toward each other…and we
act and interact with each other, this behavior is both individual
and is collective/social…….it is a very complex series of rules we
learn in order for us to engage with each other… you can touch people
in certain places and you can’t touch them in other places,
you can say some things to some people but not certain things
to other people…and sometimes the rules we play by, are
vague and incomplete…and then we enter adulthood,
where we should have learn societies rules by now…
and sometimes, we have some who don’t understand the rules
and why there are so important for us to have rules……

in fact, we could call political science and morality, the rules we
collectively decide to live by…the question becomes this,
why these set of rules instead of another set of rules?
society/the state seems to take the easiest road of actions,
in other words, society choses to follow the path of least resistance…
put into place the rules that will get the least amount of resistance…

so the individual question, what should I hope for? collectively becomes,
what should we hope for? indeed, what should we hope for?
this idea of what should we hope for, becoming a religious question
as Kant understood it, doesn’t seem to make sense because of the vastly
different understanding of the religious that each of us has………

so what should we, collectively, hope for? this is political science…
which is guided by history, philosophy, economics, biology……
history tells us what previous people tried and we can see their
success and/or failure written in the history of said people…

one thing there is not, a universal understanding
of what it means to be human and we don’t have
a universal rule book that can guide all of us…
why not? because universal rules can only work when the
situation is equal for everyone, universally. When the environment
is the same for everyone, then and only then can a universal rule book
be applicable……. we cannot expect the rules for one group, say an Eskimo tribe to
be the same rules as people living in New York or even a tribe living in Africa.
different environments require different rules for human beings…….
if I were to move to the frozen tundra of the north and live with the Eskimo’s,
the rules of behavior would be different for me, then if I stayed here in
sunny California…or the rules would be different if I moved to say, New York,
or if I moved to London… and yet, we run into a interesting thing, human beings
are human beings the world over… we have the same needs, wants, desires, hopes
as all other human beings……but given different environments, different possibilities,
we must change our behavior to match the different environments, the different possibilities
we find ourselves in…this suggest a certain malleability of human beings…

we can adapt and change given the different situations and circumstances and
environments we find ourselves in…

so this question of “what can we hope for” can and does change given the
different situations and environments we find ourselves in…

so it seems to me that what we might be looking for is not the changing,
adaptable part of us as human beings, but we are looking for the
permanent fixtures of human existence and by that I mean,
what exactly does it mean to say, human being? is there some
permanent, fixed aspect of being human that we can point to and
say, yes, yes that is a human being.

does the question of “what can we hope for” change with each changing
situation, with each new environment? or does the question of “what can
we hope for” remain the same for us individually and collectively?

the fact that I have all questions and no answers doesn’t really help me…….

Kropotkin