a new understanding of today, time and space.

(now comes the second part)

As for what we can agree upon, we can agree upon that we
want to make our world a better place. To make this earth,
a place worth living in. And how do we accomplish this?

The answer is a very hard answer. You must improve yourself.

If you want a better world, then you must begin with yourself.

I can already hear the critics. But it isn’t me. All those other
people are screwing up the world. I am just living my life,
quietly and without interfering with other people.

and that is where you are wrong. There is no them,
there is only us. One might think that because everyone else
is screwing up the world, it doesn’t matter what I do, but it
does matter. It matters a lot. If you want to make a better world,
you must start with yourself. It doesn’t matter what everyone else
is doing, or not doing. You can’t control over that. That is outside of
what you can do. So deal with what you can deal with, and that is
yourself.

Now one might say, why should I improve myself, when others don’t.
Because they are evil and impure, they might take advantage of me,
because I am improving myself…

I shall give you a reason as to why. Let us say, you decide to
seek out god. You decide to become religious and follow god.
you might say, I can’t seek out god because other might take
advantage of me while I am seeking out god. I ask, what do
other people have to do with you seeking out god?

what business of theirs is it?

Are you going to base your life on what other people may or may not do?

The business of self improvement is yours and yours alone. Now most
people use the example of others not improving themselves to justify
them not improving themselves. Other people are the problem with the
world, not me. Forget what other people are doing because you have
not control over other people. You have control over one person and
one person only, that is you.

This business of improving oneself is, frankly hard work. It takes
time, dedication, effort and failure is going to happen. That is the real
problem. The fact that to improve oneself does take time and effort.
Blaming other people is just an excuse to avoid the hard work
of making yourself a better person.

so, you have a choice. That is to remain an animal with animal values
of hate, greed, lust, anger, or to strive to become a better person
with our higher values of love, charity, justice, peace, hope.

That is the real discussion here today. It is not about the policy differences
between candidates. It is about the values we are seeking. That is the true
choice we are making today. Do we accept responsibility and accountability for
ourselves by reaching for our higher, more human self or do we lower ourselves
with animal values?

Society can only be helped, improved when each of us takes responsibility
for who we are and who we want to be, by choosing the values we
want to become.

Policy differences come and go. They are a dime a dozen. But the real lasting
outcome is our decision to grow into our better selves.

I mean, the choice is yours. I cannot decide for you and your spouse
cannot decide for you and your children cannot decide for you.

The choice to rise up and become a better human being and by doing so,
improving society, is yours.

and if we each strive to become better human beings, then much
of the policy decisions become easier because we can see where
we are going to, we can see what we are striving for, we can see
what values we want to become. The choices you make, make
policy decisions that much easier. If we choose to lower ourselves,
then we must, must build prisons over schools and we must arm the
police with ever more brutal weapons and we must engage in an ever
increasingly more violent and brutal society.

If we choose, if we choose to improve ourselves, regardless of what
other people are doing, then we improve society, we improve our state.
We can then focus on meeting the basic needs of people with an increasing
focus on feeding people, putting people in shelters, educating people,
giving better health care choices to people……

But one might argue, that I am being Naïve or unrealistic.

But I am not telling you what to do, I am simply giving you a choice.

My job as president is not to make policy choices, America is of the
people, for the people, by the people and I believe the policy
choices are the people to make, you. But I want your choices to
be made with the values that make us better people. For the values
you hold determines your choices. And I want you to make good, honest
choices based upon the higher values of human existence, not making
choices based upon the lower, animal values of anger, lust, greed, hate and
violence. My job as president is to simple execute your policy choices,
based upon your values. Not my choices and not my values.

If this is an America of the people, for the people, by the people,
then I must, must follow the will of the people, based upon
your choices. All I want is to make sure your choices based
upon your values are the values of the highest order. Values
based upon the higher nature of what it means to be human.
You decide that, I don’t.

If you want a better society, you have to be a better you.
You have to be a better human being, it is as simple as that.

If each of us strives to be a better human being, we then create
a better society, a better society… the choice is yours and yours alone.

The values we hold decides the choices we make.

So decide, what values do you hold?

Do you hold the higher, better angels of our nature or do you hold the lower,
base nature of animals?

Only you can make that choice.

Kropotkin

Now one might say, why don’t you tell me what values
I should choose?

Because we are, each of us, raised in different situations, different
circumstances, different backgrounds… we have inherited
vastly different ism’s and ideologies. And given our vastly different
situations, we have reached different conclusions about our meaning,
our purpose, our values.

We are, each of us, a victim of our different backgrounds…

My values, my meaning, my purpose comes from my background
and circumstances. The question becomes, do I overcome my past
and engage in a search for the values, meaning and purpose that is mine,
and mine alone, or do I simply hold on to the values, meaning and purpose
that was indoctrinated into me as a child?

As Iam is always pointing out, we are subject to the circumstances
of our situation and that can lead us to adapt values that are not
necessarily values we would choose if we have a choice.

For example, I am a checker in a supermarket. I must, to keep my job,
uphold the corporate values of money/profits over people’s lives.
If I fail to create profit, if I don’t work to increase the amount of money
the corporation makes, I am deemed disposable. It doesn’t matter what
values I personally hold, I must increase corporate profits or I am gone.

I am not the nihilism/corporate values that I must hold to keep my job.
but I am a victim to be sure. Now one might say, if you believe that quit.

but every single corporation in America holds the nihilist belief in
money/profits over people and their values/lives. I cannot, cannot
escape to any job that doesn’t hold to the nihilist values of corporate
America. My choice is to starve to death or to work in a job that
denies who I am as a person and negates my very existence with
its emphasis on money/profits over people and their values……

I have no choice in the corporatocracy we live in, in America today.

But I can choose my personal values, which govern my choices as
to what kind of person I can be outside of corporate America.

and if enough people, find that life under the nihilism of corporate
America is not only demeaning and dehumanizing, but also a danger
to who we are and who we want to be, they might be a wave
that will end the dictatorship of corporate America……

and we the people, we decide our own values and our own
meaning and purpose. Outside of the nihilistic values of
corporate America. We the people, in order to form a more
perfect union, must, must decide upon the values that reflect
who we are and who we want to be in the future.

Is my values, my meaning, my purpose really meant to engage
in the nihilistic pursuit of money/profits? Is that who I am?
the sole reason for my existence is to engage in the pursuit
of money/profits? is that my meaning?

I don’t believe so and I hope you don’t believe so.

so, engage in the values that give your life meaning, purpose.

I can’t tell what values give you meaning or purpose. only you can make
that choice, that decision.

are the values that give you meaning or purpose, justice or perhaps love,
or perhaps charity or honor or truth or peace…………

what value or values give your life meaning?

For me, it is freedom and justice, and justice is nothing
more then equality. To be just is to be equal. I find those values
to give my life meaning and purpose. So what values give your life
meaning and purpose?

Now Iam might argue what about values that are in conflict?

I say, we have to understand what values we hold before we can
argue about conflicting values and what they mean in any argument over
values.

We have to put the horse before the cart and discover what values
we have before we can argue about what the values might mean in
any disagreement about the values we should follow…

His arguments have a legitimate place in our discourse, just a little
bit later after we have discover and understood what values we ought to
hold that give our lives meaning and purpose.

Kropotkin

the basic question of existence is simple,

What is the meaning, purpose of our existence?

a second question might be, does existence have a purpose
or meaning?

this day to day life we lead, working, shopping, errands, eating…
does any of this “modern” life lead us any closer to what is the meaning
or purpose of life?

Now some might think the meaning or purpose of existence is
to be happy or to find knowledge or to be closer to god or to become
wise…

the fact that you might think the meaning and purpose of life
to get closer to god whereas another might think its to be happy
and a third might think the point of existence is to gain wisdom…

we can have as many different reasons given for the meaning
and purpose of life as we have human beings…

The fact that after thousands of years and we still don’t have
any clear grasp on what is the meaning or purpose of life should tell us
something. An answer tells us something and not being able to answer
something also tells us something…

is the meaning or purpose of existence simply being in existence?

possibly, possibly……

we search such disciplines as history and sociology and economics
philosophy and psychology for meaning and purpose…

we mine the information about the world in a search that it
might create meaning and purpose in our lives…

but I cannot see any meaning or purpose in such answer as
the earth is 93 million miles from earth or that New York city
has 8 million people living in it…

so if we cannot find meaning and purpose, what our are choices?

we create such artificial structures as time to help find meaning
and purpose in life…

can you think of existence without thinking about the artificial constraints
of time? the very aspect of time influences our lives to a great degree…

I have every changing starting times at work, yesterday I started at 8:30 and
tomorrow I will start at 2:00 and the next day I will start at 12:00…
many people have set and fix schedules where they start at the same time,
say 9:00 AM…but my days are revolve around the various starting times
I might have that day…the time I start work determines my day… whether
I am forced to work early or whether I have a later starting time…

time, that artificial constraint determines my day… it may be thought of
as giving my day its meaning or purpose………

our modern existence is determined by an artificial constraint as time…

Now Nietzsche problem was, as he set it out, was to find meaning and purpose
in a nihilistic universe…

How do we find meaning if the universe itself doesn’t have any meaning or
purpose?

Human existence is a question of finding our meaning/purpose…

so, given how your days is, between working or school or church or
exercise, how do you find meaning or purpose in your day to day life?

or is it even important to find meaning or purpose in this modern world?

is the question even important anymore?

or do we just ride out our lives in day to day existence of working,
shopping errands, eating and all the other things we do to pass the days?

Kropotkin

ok, we have a problem to solve…

the question of existence… what does it mean?
is there a meaning or purpose in life?

Perhaps we can recast this problem into other words…

How are we to be redeemed? How can we be saved?

but being redeemed or saved, not in a religious sense but
in a secular sense… we cannot find redemption in god or religion
because as Nietzsche noted, god is dead… and with god’s death,
so has religion died…

we cannot, cannot turn to religion or god to find redemption…

so, what is left?

As usual, I shall turn to my own life to seek understanding…

How am I to be redeemed? How can I be saved?

but then the question comes, redeemed from or saved from what?

the answer is thus, how does one become redeemed or saved from
our modern nihilistic state?

we have both the political and the economic world attempting to
drown us in the nihilism both practice…

How am I to be saved from the modern nihilism?

both politically and economically, I am devalued, dehumanized,
debased by the modern state which preaches and praises the
values of money, power, materialism, fame, titles…

all of which is part and parcel of the modern world’s
devaluing of human beings……… if the human goal is to reach
money or power or materialism or fame or titles, then we human
being are below, beneath these things…….we have no value that is
unique to being human… we are simply tools to reach such things
as power, money, fame, titles, materialism…they have more value them
just being human… and that is nihilism…

the devaluation of human beings and their values…

if making money is more important then human beings or their values,
we human beings are devalued…

and that devaluation is the modern state of affairs…

how am I to be saved or redeemed from being devalued, or
be dehumanized?

How do I find meaning/purpose in a world that practices nihilism?

by what means do I find meaning/purpose?

is it art? or is it philosophy or seeking history or do I find meaning/purpose
in those old standbys of seeking happiness or wisdom or knowledge?

we have in this last 120 years seek meaning/purpose in those many schools
of art and philosophy such as with art having Expressionism or fauvism,
cubism, Dadaism, surrealism, pop art, abstract expressionism, or post-modern art?

we have also seen the growth of the many schools of philosophy which have been
searching for or seeking meaning/purpose……which as been logical positivism,
analytic philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, poststructuralism for example…

the question to ask is, why has there been so many schools of thought in
both art and philosophy in the 20th century?

the reason seems simple enough… the fracture in the soul of human beings
as reflected by the many diverse schools of art and philosophy…

this fracture was caused by the rise of both capitalism and the rise of
the industrial revolution… both fracture human beings because of their shared
emphasis on the dehumanizing and devaluing human beings…

until we return human beings to the center of what is really important,
we shall remain divided and fractured… which is exactly what
the concepts of alienation and discontentment is…the fracturing of
the human soul…

so how am I to be redeemed or saved given that I have been
disconnected from and alienated from a society/state that treats
me as a means to the real goal which is profits, power, fame, titles,
materialism…

I exist in modern corporate world as the means to achieve profits/money…
I have no other goal in the modern economic world…
I have no political goal because I am used to achieve
the real political goal of gaining money and power…

I am used, abused and forsaken so others can achieve the goal
of money/power/materialism/fame……

I have no value in the modern world and you have no value in the
modern world…

so, once again I ask, how are we to be saved or redeemed in the face
of the modern world goal which is to devalue, dehumanize me in order
to reach the goals of money/profits/ power/ materialism/fame/titles…….

I can either crash the modern world and rebuild or, or I can remake what
it means to be human…….

so, we return to an old idea… that we are animal/human…
that we humans have come from being animals, no different then
being a dog or a cow or sheep… and what happens to those animals?

we human being use those animals to achieve our own goals…
and so as we are animal/human, we are used as we use animals…
because we are animal/human… and animals always get used in some
fashion to benefit others…

so the goal for us is to reach something more then just being animal/human…
the goal is for us to become human, fully human… and then we can no longer
be used as we use animals…

I can be redeemed/saved if, if I become human, fully human… no longer
just another animal/human that gets used like we use farm animals to
feed us…the path to be saved is the path to become fully human…

the road to being saved is not about some distant and far off
religious redemption of god or jesus or heaven, but the road lies
in us finding our full potential, our full possibilities in who we are
and exploring them…… and that path is only found in sacrifice of some
sort and that sacrifice is of material wealth and money… in order to be
saved, redeemed is to reduce our commitment to wealth and power and
fame and titles… we must commit to becoming something more then just
animal/human…

I cannot reduce my hours at work…
given my cost of living but I can limit it…
I can make becoming who I am a priority
not work, not the busy work of day to day life,
but having as a priority, finding out who I am by
the examination of my values… I must know thyself…
I must become aware and that takes time and effort…

so I reduce my working to commit to an understanding
of my possibilities…

So, I walk away from the materialistic and destructive American dream
of wealth, materialism, titles, fame……

the goal is no longer what I can buy or sell, the goal becomes
what does it take for me to become my values……

the journey is no longer about some external battle to gain wealth or
titles or material goods, but the battle becomes a battle to be aware of
who I am and what are my values?

it is an internal battle, not an external battle… I am no longer slaying dragons
or seeking outside goals…the seeking I seek is within me and about me
and has only my awareness to seek out…

walk away from the American dream and become aware of who you are……

that is the only possibility right now…

don’t buy that new car or that new house or that new TV…
or don’t buy that couch… walk away from the materialism that
dominates our lives because of the ism’s and ideologies of capitalism
and the industrial revolution…….

if you want to be free, truly free… you must forsake what it means
to be an good American and discover the true possibilities that lie
within you……

when work gives me too many hours, I simply call in sick…
I must devote time to me and if that sounds selfish, good…
I want to make the journey to become me, about me and only about me…

the modern crisis isn’t about policy differences on tax cuts or
student loans or infrastructure or defense spending…

the modern crisis is about the internal battle to become
human, to rise above being animal/human… which is above
being purely animal which we were a few million years ago…

the battle isn’t about us today or yesterday, but about who we are tomorrow…

what choices can we make that will allow us to become more human?

and that isn’t about ism’s or ideologies or money/profits or titles or fame or
materialism………

those choices only mask the real search for who we are and who we might
become……

so the problem to solve is about what it takes to become human, fully human
and not animal/human or just animal…….

Kropotkin

very lazy day because I was so tired from the recent days of
working… didn’t do much today… I did begin a biography of
Herman Hesse… and one of the author’s major points was
about the various crisis that Hesse had in his life…

it has gotten me to thinking…

what is my crisis or point of writing what I do write?

I often speak of meaning or purpose but what is my meaning or purpose?

I guess I don’t know which is why philosophy is often called involuntary
confessions… we confess to the world what we often won’t confess to
ourselves… even in our quiet moments of reflection…

I see my own life as being rather pointless and meaningless…

in trying to give my own life some meaning or purpose, perhaps,
perhaps, I might be able to give some reader an understanding into their
own meaning or purpose…

I have seen or to be more correct, I have lived the modern age
curse of nihilism and despair… and I try to find a cure, to be saved
as it were from our modern age of nihilism………

I see the modern ism’s and ideologies as being nihilistic and as such
we must fight them with all our might…

I see the future of capitalism and nationalism and materialism with
their devaluation and destruction of human beings and their values
and I see the future being grim… we have seen what the result of
what the modern age has done to us and our progeny…

we see it in words like…

“things fall apart; the centre
cannot hold;
mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world,
the blood-dimmed tide is
loosed and everywhere
the ceremony of innocence is
drowned; the best lack all conviction,
while the worst
are full of passionate intensity.”

and we see in its “passionate intensity” in our every day lives
in the streets of every day life……

and we see the lack of convictions as it blinds men to
the possibilities in our lives……

to be redeemed or to be saved, we must look beyond the ism’s
and ideologies of our time and we must see what is possible for us…

the centre has failed, it cannot hold because we cannot hold to
the beliefs and mores of our ism’s and ideologies……

that is the centre that has failed… not us, but our ism’s
and ideologies have lost our trust and our confidence…

we cannot hold to the convictions that were once the centerpiece of
modern ism’s and ideologies…

I cannot hold to the view that I will reach heaven if I act within
god’s rules… I have seen the wicked succeed too many times before
to think that somehow some second beginning will offer me some
redemption…

to be saved… to be saved to what end? I will still die… the best I can
hope for is to die with dignity which means I am not drooling at the end…

I try to fight the nihilism of our age by trying to discover how I can be
redeemed. How can I be saved in our modern world in which god is dead
and he died by our hand……… I stand accuse of murder… of killing god……
but I don’t pled guilty… I pled innocent because we needed to kill god
and find our own freedom…… we must have a secular world…
but we must then discover what is the meaning and purpose of
existence……… I cannot find the centre, the meaning and purpose
of all those ism’s and ideologies that litter the land………

I am an orphan… left without meaning or purpose…………

and so I write… trying to find that which connects me to
the centre of who I am… I am alienated from who I am by
the forces that have torn the centre apart… the nihilism of
capitalism and communism and Catholicism and Buddhism
and nationalism and patriotism and all those ism’s and ideologies that have
turned our belief systems into a nihilistic waste land…
where the centre cannot hold……

no man is an island… a wise man wrote that many years ago…
he just didn’t realize how true that was…….our nihilistic ism’s and ideologies
have turned man/human beings into atomistic creatures that go bump in the night…
we lack the centre which give us some basic directions in which we can then
direct our efforts into becoming who we are……

we must replace the old centre with a new center and that new vision is
the vision of values…… we find our centre with a determination to
to find in which we then use to become who we are……

we discover our values and then we act… we have our values determine
our actions… it isn’t about the policy differences but it is about the values
which determine those policy differences…

the values we discover and become, can become our new centre of who
we are… we create new center’s of being by having values as our
new base of operations for what it means to be human……

the centre can hold if the centre is about the values we discover
that is truly us and what we want to become………

become the values, not the ism’s and ideologies…

Kropotkin

in philosophy there’s such a thing as the ‘stand your existential ground’ law which makes it legal to produce a series of arguments to kill a god if it’s a matter of self defense. but you have to be able to prove to a jury of theologists that he attacked you first and put your life in jeopardy. can you do that? otherwise it’s just simple assault and you could be charged with third degree godslaughter.

even though nihilism is inescapable for everyone save those lucky enough to distract themselves for a while with clever philosophical tricks, it is usually most strongly felt by those condemned to work for a living. it’s that daily drudgery that prevents you the adequate luxury to distract yourself from it, see. but here’s the thing; the more you have to work, the less somebody else is having to… which means, these assholes are indirectly contributing to your nihilism. now if, say, everybody was forced to work and the typical work week were cut down to four hours a day, we’d all experience proportionately equal nihilism but have an additional four hours a day to distract ourselves from it. ergo, there is an overall decrease in nihilism but an increase in the number of those who experience it.

Existence may be meaningless in the grand scheme of things but you can still give meaning to your own life so that you have a reason to live
I accept without question the inevitability of my death and as it does not bother me it frees up mental space for me to do what I want to do

K: I am not sure how fair a trial would be with the jurors being theologians?

as for it being self defense, that part is true…in a world where there
is a god, man is just a renter with no rights… it is only until we become
the owners of the land, will we have rights…

but with rights come duties, obligations, responsibilities……

with rights, we are engaged with the responsibility to
care for the land and all its inhabitants…a notable failure
of god is to care for all his creatures… god is very much an
absent landlord who collects rent and yet doesn’t take
care of his property…

if we are to become the landlord, we must then take proper care
of our land and our failure in this part is remarkable…

land has far more value then just an economic asset…
it is our birthright, our legacy… for who doesn’t want to leave
a legacy for our children and the land is that legacy…

leaving to our children open space and forest and mountains
and valleys is the legacy we must leave to our children…

for every single animal we slaughter and every tree with
cut down or burn and for every species we cause extinction to,
is one less legacy we leave for our children and their children……

as landlords, we are responsible and accountable for the shape we
leave our land in, but as renters, we have no such responsibility,
no such accountability and so we are absolved from taking care
of the land we live on…….

so, am I a landlord or am I a renter?

and so I must remove god to become a landlord and
I then take responsibility and accountability for
the land I reside upon……

the earth, sea and sky becomes my responsibility to take care of……

Kropotkin

I am reading a biography of Herman Hesse…

and I am at the war years, WW1, to be exact…

and one thing to note is his ambivalence toward the war…

the conflict he felt was between being a “good” German and being
a citizen of the world…to be a “good” German was to praise
German and all that is German regardless if it is good or not…

Deutschland uber alles…. Germany above all…

as opposed to MAGA…Not much difference is there?

I see America traveling the same path as Germany did between the
wars…but more importantly, I see the same conflict that Hesse felt
when confronted between being a “good” German and being a citizen of the
world…I am confronted with being a “good” American or being a citizen
of the world…being a human being before being a citizen of America…

America has values which were exhibited by
the latest state of the union by IQ45…

How many different veterans were presented by IQ45 during his speech…
and he gave that national traitor Limbaugh a medal which has a military
significance…

to honor Veterans is to emphasize the values of war, of duty and of violence
that is an essential part of being a warrior…a duty to military values
and of violence to others who oppose us…

we in America hold martial value, of or appropriate to war, warlike……

we honor vets and hold military parades…offer up medals and build statues…

but I reject the martial values that dominate America…….

I reject the values that make the warrior, the veteran the highest ideal…

But Kropotkin, this is a dangerous world we live in, we must protect ourselves
and I reject this……

we act as if we have no choice in the type of world we live in, that we
are passive pawns in a violent and dangerous game… but politically,
we accept the idea of democracy… which is to say, we hold ourselves
responsibly and accountable to our actions and choices…
to say, we are not responsible or accountable for our choices,
for our actions is opposed to the political ideal that is democracy……

either we are responsible and accountable for our choices or we are not…

we have control and choices over our fate and our lives…….

we have some say over our own circumstances… we don’t need
to be passive pawns in our own lives… we can choose peace and love
as our values but we choose not too…

and why? because peaceful and being accountable for peace requires
us to make an effort and it takes time and it is work…

violence and martial values don’t require work or effort or time…
chaos doesn’t take time or effort or work to create…

to choose violence and chaos and martial values doesn’t require
any more thought than a two year old knocking down a sand castle…

to build and to create and to work for peace and love takes effort and time
and is a lot of work… we are too lazy to make an effort to discover peace
in our time… we choose the easier path of violence and hatred and
anger and martial values and destruction…… they are easy choices to make
that don’t require any effort or work…destroying is easier to do then to build or
to create……

and thus I choose to make the harder choice of working toward peace and love
and justice instead of violence and destruction and chaos…

if only we believed the bible injunction: blessed be the peacemakers…

if only we truly believed in peace as the answer… if only we believe in love…

we don’t and thus we advocate and follow the easy, effortless actions of
violence and chaos and martial values…

one might say, Kropotkin… you are unamerican!

better to be unamerican then to be a follower of hate and violence
and destruction………

I challenge you to make a choice……. do you follow the easy path of
destruction and violence or do you take the long and hard road of
peace and justice and love?

Kropotkin

I am still reading Hesse’s biography…

I came across a term that has struck me…

Hesse’s book, Siddhartha, is called a “spiritual autobiography”…
as all of Hesse’s books are……

and upon reflection, I guess I am writing a “spiritual autobiography”…

I am trying to get at that which cannot be described by one’s events
in a life or a simple description of one’s life…

I could write that I was born handicap, with a serious hearing loss…

and that would be biography, but I am trying to get past simple
biography, a simple life story, into something that is both
unique to me and part of the human story of existence…

a rendering of my life story would be and is, to be honest,
rather boring… I have done little in my life to justify
any type of accounting of who I am…

but my story isn’t about the physical journey I have made,
but about the inner journey of my life… a spiritual autobiography
is exactly what I have been writing…

I am writing for two audiences, one is you dear reader, in hopes
you too begin your own travels into that which is your
inner self and what it means to be you… and the second audience,
is me, and what does it mean to me, to travel into the inner world,
the nature of our spiritual autobiography into who we are and what
is possible for us…

have I reached that which is really me? as I am still writing, I would
say, no… I must write until I have no more to say and on that day,
I will have concluded my own journey into what it means to be
Kropotkin…

we human beings engage in two types of journeys… the first is the
physical journey we make from being born to the day we die…
and the second is the inner journey of examination, of
becoming aware of that which is me, not physically, not that
I am 5 foot 8inch or that I am 210 lbs, those are physical facts of
my existence…but the facts of what it means to be Kropotkin
and what are my spiritual goals? but I fear that the word spiritual
has an unnecessary and unwanted religious connotation that I
don’t want or need………

but I can write about my inner journey in a spiritual fashion without
ever approaching a religious context for my spiritual journey…

a spiritual journey doesn’t require or demand a religious context…
it doesn’t demand there be a god or heaven or hell or a devil or sin…

a spiritual autobiography is simply one’s journey into that which
is important and what matters in a person’s inner life…

“who am I to become” is not a physical question
it is a basic question of existence that has little or nothing
to do with my physical nature, my body or my physical needs…

“Who am I to become” is an journey we make internally,
within ourselves, spiritually as it were…

if there is a issue or a problem with the “Modern” age, it is that
we have forsaken our inner world for the outer, external world…

we seek creature comforts and fancy cars and a lot of materialistic
goods… but we ignore that which is internal to us… we ignore
our inner needs to fulfil our external needs… and we must address this
imbalance by once again becoming aware of who we are, internally…

who is this creature called Kropotkin? not by my external needs or looks but
by what does Kropotkin need or want internally, within himself……

I am always talking to myself… I hold constant dialogues within myself…
I talk to myself more then anyone else, as it should be…

I am angry about the fact that I am still forced to earn a living because
it takes away from me being able to write and read and think……

I talk to myself about these “injustices” and I try to make myself feel
better about it… it doesn’t work, but at least I try…

I resent time taken away from my exploration of the human condition……

be it my wife or work or taking out the garbage…………

I know what I want and I am unable to fulfill it because of
mere money… that most useless and worthless thing in the universe…

I want time to think about what it means to be human…….

and I am unable to get this……

so, I engage with my inner dialogue and attempt to seek answers to
my questions…….

so, if you were writing your “spiritual autobiography”
what would you say? What would you hold as important?
what are you searching for? what journey are you on?

Kropotkin

now one might ask, what does my inner needs or world, have
to do with anything? It won’t make me rich or famous or
powerful or give me the titles I so desperately desire…

No, no it won’t…

but take an honest look at the world and at yourself…

the world/people are full of anger and despair and disconnected
and alienated from each other and themselves and yet,
we can safely say, we have the highest GDP the world has
ever seen, but, but that is the problem…

we focus on money and profits and the Gross domestic product
and the stock market and suffer from it… with anger and despair
and disconnection and alienation even thou we have tremendous
economic wealth…the failure lies with us for we have
given priority to the well being of our pocketbook and have
forgotten the well being of our soul and who we are……

and as long as we remain focus on our economic or political self,
we shall not, in any form of the word, be happy…

you want to become whole, you have to begin with who you are internally,
who are you within you, is the question… not how much you make or
have in retirement or how much your house is, but the wealth that must
be cultivated is within us…

the world inability to be happy is directly tied into our failure to seek
that which is inside of us… to become who you are is the basis of
being contented or happy or full of life…it isn’t wealth or profits
or titles or how many houses you own, but the path to becoming, lies
within us, not outside of us…

you want to end the drug culture or end the opioid “epidemic” the answer
isn’t wealth or titles or fame or profits… no, the answer lies within us

we have forsaken the inner world to enrich the outer world…
and how is that going for you, or for the world?

we see the rise of bigotry and ignorance and intolerance and
hatred and anger and lust and greed and these are the results of
our failure to seek the inner self of who we are…

the outer world, the external world is a reflection of our inner world
and the outer world doesn’t look so good in relationship to what
may be possible and what has been…

we begin within us and then, and then that is reflected into the outside world…
and what I see of the external world is chaos and confusion and despair
and severe unhappiness… and that is due to our misapplication
of our resources into making us wealthy instead of making us wise…

to seek is to devote time, effort, resources and plan old hard work
and people don’t want to take the time or effort or commit the resources
to seek that which is much more fundamental to our being, the inner self…

we would rather engage in shallow game of wealth and prestige and titles
because it takes less work then to make an honest pursuit of who we
are and what we might become, of what is possible for us…

and we are making choices and by the looks of things in the world,
we are choosing wrong…

to choose wrong, as people have is to choose against autonomy
and possibilities… the basic freedom a person can have is to
make a choice toward becoming an autonomous person…
and choosing to be the shallow possibilities of wealth or power
or fame or titles is to walk away from any autonomous possibilities
we might have…

if we play the game of seeking wealth or power or titles or
fame or prestige is to abdicate your autonomous self…
it is to choose what society wants as oppose to what you might want
or need…

if we honestly see the world with its desperate people seeking
their desperate agendas which has nothing to do with what is truly
important which is to seek that which is inside of you… to seek internally,
not externally…

once you have solve the question of who you are, then and only then
can you begin to reenter the world but this time you are a butterfly
and not a caterpillar and that makes all the difference in the world…

one might be blunt and ask, why are you unhappy?

I can say, just as bluntly, you are unhappy because you seek the wrong thing…

you seek external glory instead of doing the hard work and discovering who you are…

the world is also unhappy because it seeks the wrong thing…

it seeks wealth and power and fame and titles and those
trinkets are worthless… see the misery of the world to know
that……

forsake those worthless trinkets that we busy our days with…

seek that which has value, today and forever… seek the inner soul
which lies within you… and then begin the true journey to become
who you are…

that is the only journey worth taking and the only journey that doesn’t lead
to unhappiness and despair and the angst that dominates our world today…

to be saved… to be redeemed… one must first
begin by forsaking the trinkets of the modern world,
fame, fortune, titles, power… and the journey
toward who we are begins……

Kropotkin

listen to a conservative and listen to their idea about
what the world is…

the world is dark, dangerous, a jungle, dog eat dog,
nasty, brutish, unhappy, brutal…….

what does it say about a person who cannot see
any love or beauty or joy in the world?

it says, the, conservatives, are deeply unhappy because
when we describe the world, we don’t actually describe the world
objectively, we describe the world as we see it through our colored
glasses…

and conservatives see a dark and unhappy world, which is a reflection
of who they are.

we see the world through our inner eyes, not our physical eyes……

so how do you see the world?

if it is as dark as the conservatives viewpoint is, perhaps you should reconsider
who you are and what you are pursuing…

Kropotkin

it is my friend’s witching hour of 3 am but I shall post here instead of
there…

We see in Hesse for example, the attempt of one to “unify” our soul…

we have been atomized, destroyed into small moving pieces by the forces
of capitalism and the industrial revolution……

but that is not the only thing going on…

we have been negated, nullified… as human beings and
as beings holding values…

what is the reality of modern human existence?

I stand alone and negated… My own personal values of
love or justice or peace or charity is negated, deemed unimportant…
the modern economic system demands that I negate my own values
for the modern values of money/profits… that is the only value worth
holding in the modern world…

so the question becomes, how does one become who they are?

How do I return to holding values that I honor and that I am…

if the modern world demands we deny our values and being in the name of
profits, then how do we return to who we are?

I stand… alone, naked apart from my fellow human beings because
the modern core values of the pursuit of money/profits, denies me
me holding my core values because my core values don’t
contribute to profits/money…

I stand alone, alienated, disconnected from my fellow human beings
because we are in competition for the scraps off the wealthy man table…

that is the essence of the “trickle down” theory…… we fight over
the few scraps of money that has falling off the rich man table…

we don’t engage in the search for our values because we are supposed
to negate our being, our values in this pursuit of wealth and profits

How do we reunite ourselves into the real values of existence?

the first step, the first step is always awareness, becoming aware
of who we are and where we are in this process we call life…

in a couple of weeks, I turn 61 and that knowledge establishes
me in a different place then if I was turning 21 or 31 or even
51…our age is an indication of our place in the road of life…

I am heading into the last and final stage of old age…

what happens when we become old? At each step of old age
is a reduction of our possibilities… I can no longer be my possibilities…
in other words, I can no longer run a 10 minute mile or climb Everest
or live the life I lived when I was younger because my age has precluded
me from the many possibilities I had when I was younger…
as we age, doors close… as we begin life, doors begin to open and
possibilities exists until one day in middle age, doors begin to close…
until we reach old age, when finally all the doors close except one, death…
that becomes the only possibility we can reach and become… death…

the modern world also reduces possibilities by forcing us to engage
in the nihilistic practices of our modern economics and politics…

modern economics reduces my choices of becoming…

I can only achieve a negation of who I am in the capitalistic society…
because I cannot hold my values in the modern corporate world
because my values don’t create profits/money and all the modern world
is concern with is making profits/money… anything else is
unimportant, our values and our lives is deemed of far less value
then the pursuit of profits/money…

it is not about the unification of our soul that is important,
but the understanding that our values, indeed our very lives
have been negated in the modern pursuit of profits/money…

now this looks like we need to reunite our separated
being of existence… recall that Goethe once said,

“alas, I have two souls in my breast”

and we modern think ourselves lucky if we only have two souls
residing within us… I am diverse and can I contradict myself
because I am wide and diverse… if I contradict myself, so be it…I
have many souls within my breast… and not all of them are so inclined
to make their views so neat and tidy as to not contradict myself…

I am a modern child and so I have been negated and denied in both
body and spirit… how do I regain my self and am no longer negated
or denied in either body or spirit?

that is the real modern question, how can we exist without being
negated or denied?

what does it take to live a life that isn’t negated or denied?

what must I do?

so, the problem that exists, as is currently exhibited,
is that the society, the ism’s we live, is negating
and denying who I am, and negating my own values
and is negating my own life… I am expendable, in the modern
world, my life is expendable, my values unimportant
and denied… the only thing that matters and that includes
my values and my life is the pursuit of profits/money…

so how do I escape?

How do am I saved?

How am I to be redeemed in the modern world?

the modern world demands that I must negate who I am in
the pursuit of profits/money… My very body is negated in
the pursuit of profits/money… I am being worked to death
and the corporate world couldn’t care less because I am being
sacrificed on the alter of corporate profits…

so, how do I become who I am?

by working less, by buying less, by not engaging in
the modern economic world… by starving them to death…

if the system is the problem as I have suggested, then the system
must be overthrown, demolished…

but it is more then just overthrowing an economic system,
it is also about us becoming who we are and is also
about us taking accountability and responsibility for who we are…

it lies in our choices we make for ourselves…

I have been negated, denied by society and its economic system
and in return I get some little amount of money which allows
me to buy a car or a couch or a new TV…

our salary/wages is our 30 pieces of silver
for which we have we betrayed our soul and body and our values…

so the first step is to become aware… to engage in the question
about what is the examined life and what is the unexamined life…

we must find the time to engage in this question of who we are
and what are our values……… we are so busy in this modern age
we no longer have any time to just sit and listen to our soul
as he sings in the dead of night…

and what songs of despair might our soul sing in the cold
dark night?..

I can only speak for myself but tonight, my soul
was in despair of my own values and existence
as it was/is threaten by our modern society and its
demand that we put society/state before ourselves…

find the peace and quiet needed to be able to listen
to your soul as it sings songs of engagement and despair
at 3:00 in the morning…

Kropotkin

so we have in our “modern society” people with
fractured souls… Goethe “alas, I have two souls in my breast”
and we see Goethe at the beginning of the modern age, he lived
during the events which have dominated us politically and economically,
the French revolution and the rise of the industrial revolution…

the question becomes how do we in the 21st century, reunite our
soul which have been torn asunder by the multiplicity of our modern age…

we have been fractured by the demands of our modern economic
system which has dehumanized, robotized modern man…

we drill in lockstep to the arbitrary and soul crushing
march of the industrial revolution… with its brutalizing
demands of time clocks and set schedules and punishments
of any who commit the ultimate crime of disobedience to authority…

we have separated ourselves in response to the crushing demands
of the modern world… we play different roles in response to the
all consuming demands of the modern world… I am, at my appointed
times, father, son, husband, worker, consumer, citizen……

or said another way, the demands of our modern ism’s and ideologies
force me to play at being a citizen or an American or to be nationalist
or a democrat or a consumer… I must be willing to sacrifice myself
at the demands of works, society, the state, the church… the culture…

if called upon, I must play my role or be isolated and called names
like radical, socialist, communist, un-American, terrorist, liberal……

society has all kinds of names to call those who won’t play the games
demanded by society or the state…

and these demands have fractured our soul……

individually and collectively……

exhibited by the many schools in ART and in philosophy
and in history and economics… these diverse schools of
thoughts in the various disciplines are symptoms of our
fractured souls……….

the modern world has no center to hold because the
soul which is the center of who we are, is fractured…

how to overcome our fractured soul is the question of
our modern times……

the unity wanted by various religions, to become one with god or
be one with the original thing from which we came from is no longer
a goal to be achieved… Buddhism is based upon a return to that from
which we came… to achieve “nothingness” is the Buddhist goal…
no more shall we be reborn and reborn again…that is the Buddhist goal
but that goal is not the answer to the question of, how do we repair
our fractured souls?

it is our fractured souls that prevent us from being able to
meaningful connect with my fellow human beings…
I cannot be a part of something bigger then me if I do not
have a soul that is whole and together…

we desperately search for meaning in our lives but we cannot find
meaning/purpose because our soul, individually and collectively,
is fractured and divided…

how do we mend this broken and damaged soul of ours?

we begin this by creating a spiritual autobiography…

we begin by sorting out who we are and what are our possibilities…

I am Kropotkin… I am old and so my possibilities are far more limited
then when I was young… but, and this is important, but I still have
possibilities even as I am old and the doors which at one time in my life
opened and those same doors are now closing because I am growing older…

so I still have possibilities… I must seek them out and engage in which
of the remaining possibilities are who I want to become…….

reduced to a sentence…

being and becoming…

we have being… who we are and we have becoming… how we shall become…

and that is really the entire question of life… who are we and who shall we become…

but we cannot understand who we are if we have a fractured soul
and we cannot become if our soul remains fractured……

individually and collectively…

so what is our solution?

Kropotkin

now I must say that I don’t offer any answers…

I am a child of the modern age and all I have to offer is
questions… but finding the right question is all
that one needs… the genius of a Socrates, Newton,
Descartes, Einstein is not in the answers they gave, but
in their work in creating the right question…

answers are easy to find… everyone has an answer…

but discovering the right question… that takes real talent…
that is where true genius is found…

Kropotkin

so I ask once more… what is our meaning/purpose?

we can help discover that by means of a spiritual autobiography…
help find it, not necessarily will we find it, but it might help find it…

it is in the recognition of the human condition that will help us to
understand what it means to be human……

we are born… tabula rasa… blank slates…
and society and the family fill that blank slate with
the ism’s and ideologies of the state, the church, the culture,
the media, with schooling/education is simply being educated into
that society’s ism and ideologies…

we are filled with ism’s like nationalism and patriotism
and Catholicism and Hinduism’s and Christianity and
capitalism and obedience to authority which I guess is called
Authoritism….and obedience to all the other ism’s and ideologies
that a society tries to indoctrinate its citizens with…….

then at some point in time, we become aware of the indoctrinations…
we become aware that our belief in nation and state and religions has been
taught into us, indoctrinated into us… and so we begin, if we are so lucky,
to examine our beliefs and our indoctrinations… that usual begins around
our teen years and can last for a long, long time……

if we are unable to begin the process of an examination of our lives, then
we become like IQ45 and blindly accept everything that we were indoctrinated
with as children……

but we can become aware and alive to our other possibilities and thus
we can begin to examine the other possibilities that exists out there……

we are… being and by examination… we can become…

I was raised moderate democrat… and by examination and by
events, I was radicalized… to the point of becoming an anarchist…
where I was for many years… this is politically… and I was by examination,
also changed philosophically to the several strands of philosophy that I
moved from and into as the years passed…

my adults years have been changes from one possibility to another,
from anarchism to communism to democrat to liberal…
and my philosophical possibilities also changed from Nietzschean to
a follower of Hume to a follower of Kant to existentialism to Kierkegaard
to today… where I don’t follow anyone anymore… I simply express my
own values and views as I see them philosophically……

I have grown and become something more as the years and my experience
has changed… I have gone from being to becoming…
and I still am becoming…what I don’t know… but my process hasn’t
stopped, at least not yet…

I still seek meaning/purpose in my life…
and I still have a fragmented soul……
and I still don’t quite understand what it means
to be human, fully human………

my journey to becoming is still going on…

one possibility for me is an ongoing spiritual autobiography that
I write for me and me alone… as I am writing today and have for all these
years…and hopefully for years more to come…

I have become aware of the loss of possibilities that has occurred in
my life… but I seek other possibilities that might replace those
lost possibilities…

I seek to obey the Socratic oath which is to examine my life
and the life I lead and in doing so, become aware of who I am…

I can, as another possibility, become more moral…….

but what does being moral… being… being moral actually mean?

I can engage in aesthetics or work on my life as art…

or I can engage in my life existentially where I see my
life in terms of existentialism…….

I have possibilities…but I must seek them out…

I cannot be passive in my search for those possibilities…

I can also seek out my meaning… purpose in terms of the values
I decide to pursue… such as finding my meaning/purpose in terms
of the values I decide to pursue… such as pursing values like justice,
love, hope, charity, peace, honesty……. I can find meaning and purpose
in my engagement with the values that I pursue…

I can make justice my reason for being… I can exist to
follow and create justice at every chance I get…

I can make justice, as a value, my reason for being and my reason
for existence…meaning/purpose……

that is the point of values… they give life its meaning/purpose…

I can live for and die for my higher values of existence…

they make life worth living……

and that is how we reunite our divided and broken souls……

we reexamine life and conclude that we can reunite our souls under
the banner of justice or of love or of charity…….

we can become our values…… and that possibility becomes our
meaning/purpose……

and so in making justice, as my value, I create a new possibility for
Kropotkin to exist… when all other possibilities slowly go away,
I can create a new possibility for me… by being… just……

being… becoming… that is the path of life…

Kropotkin

I have often spoke of the industrial revolution and the political
equivalent, which is of course the French Revolution……

but I haven’t said a word about the prior revolution,
the scientific revolution……

which can be said to have started in 1543, the publication of
Copernicus’s “On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres”

and lasting to today…but why should the industrial revolution
create the havoc that it did and why didn’t the scientific revolution
create similar havoc?

It did create havoc but given the distance we are now from the beginning
of the scientific revolution, we cannot see it for what it is…

the scientific revolution wasn’t the nihilistic revolution
that the industrial and the French revolution was……

science offers us something that is positive…
it gives us a vision of what is and what isn’t…

but the industrial revolution has only offered us a nihilistic vision
of the universe…we might be people with values but you certainly
wouldn’t know it from the industrial revolution… values are negated
and human beings are negated in return for profits/money…

that is the heart of the industrial revolution and its ism, capitalism…

the scientific revolution still holds people to have values
and the right to existence… whereas the industrial revolution
and capitalism only offers the values of profits/money…we have
no values or existence within the industrial revolution…

that is the difference… the scientific revolution still values people
whereas the industrial revolution, doesn’t…

Kropotkin

This past week has been exhausting. I have multiple
doctor’s note stating because of my spinal surgery,
I am only able to work 32 hours… this past week they
gave me 37 hours…I haven’t worked this many hours in over
10 years and even after some rest, I am still exhausted…

this question of finding meaning and purpose becomes more
relevant in the face of yet another attempt by work to kill me
with excessive work and stress…

I don’t find meaning/purpose in work/job/career… I never have found
any meaning in the lifelong struggle to create profits/money for others while
I get table scraps from the various corporations I have worked for…

now some might get meaning and purpose from work but I suspect what is
really happening is their childhood indoctrinations that work is good and
part of the value of being human is to work hard and keeping our nose to
the grindstone…and other foolish propaganda that only serve our
corporate masters… our working ourselves to death for pennies
and a very slim chance at retirement isn’t worth the effort we put into work…
I know what I speaks of, I am 61 and I have worked for over 40 years
and the only thing I have to show for it is a broken down body…

to think that the ideal of the American dream is some sort of meaning or purpose
is a lie meant to deceive you into slaving for 40 years and get nothing out of it…

the house with a picket fence with two car garage with two kids, a boy and a girl
and a dog name spot… lies meant to deceive you into thinking that is some sort
of goal to achieve… it isn’t…to own a house is a trap, forcing you
to sink deeper and deeper into the nightmare that is the American dream…

to buy into this lie of house, cars, vacation homes, couches, TV…
all meant to get you to spend your life working to afford unnecessary
baubles that don’t count for anything at all…and what do they cost you?

the rest of your life working pointless and meaningless jobs trying to pay
off the American nightmare……. walk away from all that crap…

find meaning and purpose in other things beside the bill of goods that
society and the state offer you…

so how do we find meaning/purpose in life?

I have become aware of how we find meaning and purpose by
events such as the recent super bowl and Valentine’s day for example…

we create an event and we affirm within that event, some meaning or
significance for us…I have a birthday coming up… I am supposed to find
meaning and purpose in that birthday… but the only significance I can find
in turning 61 is, I am old…and the possibilities available to me, has
remarkable been reduced to a scant few…and that is the result of being
old… your possibilities become fewer and fewer as we age……

finding meaning and purpose in those few remaining possibilities is all I have left
in my life…….at some point here, the only remaining possibility left in my life will
be death and I must come to embrace that one final choice when that day comes…

but that day is not today and today, I still have the chance to find meaning
and purpose and possibilities in my life……….

many find their meaning and purpose in their children and grandchildren,
and I have no burning needs that I see in others to continue creation by
having children…and we can call creation just another word for meaning
and purpose…….

the day to day events that we seek meaning and purpose in like birthdays
and holidays like upcoming Easter are not enough, in my humble opinion,
to create meaning and purpose in our lives…

but Kropotkin, you have eliminated every single possibility we might
have to have meaning and possibility in our lives…

I suppose I have… which is to suggest that we can find meaning and purpose
in some other fashion… which is to suggest that we find meaning and
purpose in seeking and fulfilling the possibilities available to us…

I can, at my advance age, seek to fulfill what possibilities are still left to me…

and one such possibility is what I am doing here…which is to explore what it
means to be human… to seek out our possibilities and then fulfill them…

but it is not enough to explain or write out what is possible for me…

I must physically engage in that which is possible for me……

so I read about other people report about what is possible…

Nietzsche wrote a whole slew of books making a report about what is
possible for human beings from his standpoint and Hesse wrote
several books about the possibilities he discovered
and Goethe wrote books about the possibilities he found
and Hume wrote his books about what he thinks are possibilities
available to us human beings and Kant and Spinoza and Plato
and writers like Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury and Philip Dick
and Jules Verne all wrote their reports about what is the human
possibilities……. we only have to read those books to see what is
possible for us human beings.

We also have the Russian reports to what is possible in Tolstoy
and Dostoyevsky and Pushkin……

we have many reports as to what is possible for us human beings
to be and to become… being and becoming…….

we only have to take them seriously and act upon those reports left
to us by all the writers and thinkers and philosophers that have left
their reports as to what is possible for us to become…………

being and becoming

in that we can find our meaning and purpose…

Kropotkin

Personally, I moved to a different country.

61 isn’t insanely old, and if the house/whatever is paid for you could sell it and move everyone somewhere where the exchange rate means you won’t have to work anymore. Or grab a ctefla and teach a bit of english to adults. More fun than 37 hours a week in a job you hate. Bit of sunshine etc. Foreign climes.