Now one might say, Kropotkin, it doesn’t matter what values you choose,
you have no way of deciding which values that exist, exist within
a certain context… in other words, choosing values are simply
arbitrary… and values are simply arbitrary values that cannot
be justified…you cannot defend choosing justice as a value because
justice is simply something that you pick because of your political/economic
understanding of the world… you had no choice in picking justice
because of your specific world view that is the result of your place in the
socio-economic world………. in other words, I picked justice because
of my specific socio-economic standing in the world… if I had
another socio-economic place, I would pick other values………
a dubious idea… but nevertheless a possible idea……
our chosen values are not necessarily the result of our socio-economic place
in the world, the values we pick can be chosen for other reasons besides
our socio-economic place in the world……….
I choose the values I choose because they are what I want to become…
I want to have justice as my guiding principle because I think justice
is a value that is worth holding onto… now one may object saying, that
value of justice is simply an arbitrarily chosen value, chosen because of
your socio-economic place in the world… or we can choose values
because they are values that represent who we are or who we want to be…
not necessarily because of our socio-economic place…
choosing a value isn’t a bad thing nor does it mean anything more then
a chosen value… or own individual “contraption” can allow us to
escape and choose values of our own choosing…… we don’t have to
be held hostage by our own values or our particular position in life or
our socio-economic place in the universe… we can simply choose values
outside of our own individual understanding of the world because
that is the freedom we have… we don’t have many other freedoms…
I can escape my own individual, particular understanding of the universe by
choosing values that lie outside of my particular place in the universe…
we are not held hostage by the ghosts of the past which determines us
yes, we cannot fly or we cannot turn into horses or run faster then
a lion… but those are determined by evolutionary forces that we have
no control over and by natural forces we have no control over…
we can grow and change and become and adapt… we do this all the time
in many different and diverse ways… we can become something other
then what our particular station in life is currently………. we are not
determined by the confluence of our individual circumstances…
the “I” that is Kropotkin isn’t fixed by his circumstances or his particular
childhood or past… it is changeable and adaptable ……………
we can rise above our current situation in life regardless of that situation…
but I cannot hear again… that is a natural influence, a natural event
that has determined my life… but given that, I don’t have to be forever determined
by that event… I can rise above it… it is me, but I don’t have to let that decide
who I am or what I can become…what my possibilities are, are not determined
by my hearing loss or my particular socio-economic status right now…
but by the choices I make… by the possibilities I embrace…by the values
I choose……yes, we are determined but we can choose freedom within
that determination of forces like evolution and gravity and forces like
communism and capitalism… we can choose values that allow us to escape
those forces that determine us………
Kropotkin