One of the Kantian/Kropotkin questions is this, “What values should I hold”?
Ok, what are our choices for values to hold? we can hold so called “Religious”
values… (whatever that means) or we can hold secular values… Materialism
values like communism or capitalism…
We can pursue religious values which usually are values determined by
or demanded by god and/or religion…surrender to god is both
Christian and… and Muslim…and Jewish and Hindu and………
surrender to the “AUTHORITY” is usually the nature of these values…
and the “AUTHORITY” is usually the local one… the local values…
(to turn this into reality, in sports, we usually root for the home team,
Here in the San Francisco area we root for the Warriors, Giants,
Sharks, 49’s and A’s and why? because they are the local teams
and we don’t root for the Yankee’s or the Braves or the Twins because
they aren’t the local team… Religion is done the same way, we root for
the local team be it Christians or Muslims or Hindu’s or Buddhist)
we don’t choose a religion because of what it values, we choose
a religion based on our proximity to our community, our parents, our
state and our education… we simply adopt the home team’s beliefs…
the next possibility is to adapt secular values… materialism values
that are encased in such materialism forms as communism and
capitalism… modern values that permeate the modern world…
that money and goods such as cars and couches hold more value then
inner values such as love and hope and honesty… we exists in a modern world
of materialistic values… pursue the material goods instead of thinking about
the soul… but in saying that, one automatically assumes that the soul
we refer to, is taken in a religious context and we don’t want that…
so, we are caught between having values that are materialistic and values
that are religious…what about a third way? can we have secular values
without an appeal to the materialistic values of communism or capitalism?
can we approach the values of the soul without, without being forced
to adapt religious values?
and this was Nietzsche task… how to find meaning in a meaningless world?
How to find values without recourse to religion or to a recourse to
materialistic systems such as communism or capitalism?
that becomes one of the primary task of the modern world…
to find a third way to see or understand values without any recourse
to religion or to the religion of capitalism/communism?
a rather tough task because in our hast to build the modern world,
we only allowed two and just two choices for us to discover our
question, “What are we to do?”…… we can see to our soul, the religious
or we can see to our body, the materialistic… we didn’t leave any third
way…but we must have a third way… we cannot believe that we have
only two choices, the soul or the body? Logically, we must have, we need
a choice that includes the two… now remember our discussion of
good and evil… two distinct and separate entities which after some thought
becomes two sides of the same coin and then after some more thought
become the same thing… UMMMMMMMMMMMMM
I wonder what this might have to say about our soul / body question?
I wonder? :-"
so we have rejected the two primary understandings of the human being,
that we must favor one or the other, the soul and adapt religious values
or the body and adapt materialistic values… in favor of some sort of
compromise that allows us to adapt both understandings, the body and
the soul… without any recourse to a religious or to a materialistic
concept of the soul/body… this is a tough nut to crack but a necessary one
to work out… we cannot be about one or the other, the soul or the body…
we must include both in our understanding of the world… we need both…
let us try this…….let us work this from inside out…
it is clear from the rules that we all play in regards to other human beings,
that the positive values, love, kindness, hope, charity, peace are values
that are a benefit to both us and to the society…the negative values
of hate, anger, lust, greed, violence are values that damage both us
and our society… given our daily interactions within society, we see what
those values do during our daily interactions with others… and because this
isn’t rocket science, we can see that the positive values begat the positive
values… love and peace and kindness reap benefits that
are a benefit to us individually and collectively……… love begat’s love
and peace begats peace and hope begats hope and kindness begats kindness…
and we see the negative values damaging us individually and collectively…
hate begats hate and greed begats greed and lust begats lust and fear begats
fear…
so instead of embracing an ism that may or may not promote positive values
we simply embrace those values without an recourse to an ism or an ideology…
we take values such as love and use those to decide on our course
in life… instead of using an ism or an ideology as an road map through
life, we take values such as love and peace and hope and charity to chart
our course through life……….
this is how we avoid the two courses of the religious and the materialism…
we adapt values instead of ism’s and we chart our course through life by
the values we adapt…………not the ism’s or ideologies we accept because
they are in proximity to us and not because of what they might offer us.
now at no point am I saying, this is the values you must accept…
I cannot tell you what values are your values… I can only say,
think about these values… I am promoting certain values but I am not
saying you must choose these values… you can certainly choose other values
or even other ism’s or ideologies… and I can say, there might have been a better
choice then that or those values and those ism’s and ideologies……
I can only lead you to the water… I cannot make you drink…
so what values or ism’s or ideologies are you going to drink?
and as important, is why? why those values and why those ism’s?
Kropotkin