so the path I have laid out is a subjective one…
but Kropotkin, we must have objective, certainty!
and that is what philosophy and science has done, focused
on the objective and what can be certain? recall the centuries long
exploration of knowledge, epistemology from Philosophy? That exploration
was a search for the limits of certainty in the lens of knowledge…we sought
certainty in terms of knowledge…
logic is the search for certainty… “Method” is the search for certainty…
but as I have pointed out, we come from a subjective viewpoint…
we see the world in terms of our subjective internal thinking which
is some sort of mishmash of childhood indoctrinations, biases, superstitions,
habits, or as one here has called it, the mental contraptions of existence…
and those contraptions are not fixed or logically or set in concrete…
my own mental contraptions are based on my study of philosophy,
my childhood, my current socio-economic situation, my accidental
traits of birth… being born in America and being white and being male,
being born in an upper class family… all traits I had nothing to do with…
David Hume once wrote about the inner being we call “ourselves”
he felt that there was no there in there… we are a shifting, mixed,
ever changing of beliefs… Hume felt that there was nothing inside of us
to suggest that there was some center inside of us, that corresponds
to us…there is no center inside of us that we can point to and say, yes,
that is me…if I try to pin down who Kropotkin is, as Hume tried to do,
I don’t find some sort of center that says, here is Kropotkin…
think of it like those candies that have a center in the midst
some other candy… like a hard shell in the midst of soft chocolate…
we think we human beings have a hard shell that is us, in the midst of
our soft and gooey human shell we call the body…
but try to find it… take your time… as Hume pointed, we can only
see that a shifting collection of temporary personalities, but no hard mix
that we can call, ourselves…
so why should we think about the universe as being objective
and fixed, certain? when inside of us, our very being isn’t
objective or fixed or certain? Perhaps that is why we seek that
which we cannot find inside of us, the objective, the fixed soul,
the certainty inside of us…so we seek that which we think,
think might us what is wrong inside of us… we seek the objective
and certainty outside of us to fix what is subjective and not certain
inside of us…
perhaps we are uncertain, alienated, disconnected from ourselves
and thus from our society, the state, the culture because we
seek the wrong thing… we seek something that doesn’t exists,
we seek the certain, the objective, the fixed in the universe
but we don’t find it because it doesn’t exists in the universe either…
so let us seek that which is inside of us, the subjective, the uncertain,
the unfixed and learn to dance instead of becoming concrete and solid…
the name of a book I like is, “all that is solid melts into air”
and that is a good description of our modern existence…
what was once solid, has melted into air…
the life of living in rural, agriculture is full of solid living…
you can see the land and you can physically see, hear, touch, smell,
taste everything that you grow on the land… being in a rural existence
is being connected to the ground and that ground is the basis of being
objective, fixed, certain… but our world today isn’t fixed to the ground
the way it was for 10,000 years for our ancestors… but think about the time
before we become fixed and set on the ground…think about the million
years or so, of the life we human beings lived… hunter-gatherer…
there was no fixed, set existence for human beings… we simply followed
the animals around to make sure we had steady food supply…
there was nothing fixed or set or certain in our lives for over
a million years…
we became human beings while living uncertain, unfixed, unsettled
lives…it has only been in the last 10,000 years that we have lived,
fixed, settled, certain lives…
what are you saying Kropotkin, that we should return to the hunter-gatherer
existence of over a million years just to return to some weird notion
of the past and who we lived?
no, not at all…I am just exploring possibilities and what if’s and what might
have been, to understand what we were and what we are and what we might
become…
what is the very first rule in Philosophy? to know thyself.
all philosophy begins in that very first rule…
and that is what I am trying to do… to know ourselves… by exploring the past
and present…
I am saying it is possible that we are seeking the wrong thing…
we are currently seeking the objective, the set, the fixed in existence…
and that is fine, but that may not be who we are and what we need to
be searching for… we must accept as equally possible, the need within
us to be subjective and uncertain and not fixed…
we need to learn to dance to the music of uncertainty and subjective
and not fixed…
instead of planting roots and becoming tree’s, we might need to learn
to live like birds or clouds… just float with the wind, the breeze…
to dance because it is not certain and not fixed and not set…
and perhaps, perhaps that is why the Romantic era happened just
after the Enlightenment era… the Enlightenment was an era that
suggested the point was to settle down and plant roots into the
ground of objective, fixed beliefs of science and logic and rationality…
and so came along the Romantics who said the exact opposite…
don’t settle down with logic and science and rationality…
learn to dance with the subjective, the uncertain, the not fixed…
and so we have had this battle between the two sides which has
defined the modern age…and who shall win?
we shall win once we have learned to combine both into
unset, unsettle, uncertain mixture…
for we need both to survive…
Kropotkin