so what is “real?” “What is reality?”…
what is the “first” principle of existence, that was
sought by metaphysicians since Plato?
Nothing is real, or within reality… it is simply an interpretation, which
is one of many interpretations about what is “real” and what isn’t “real”…
the search for “reality” is simply a search for a stronger interpretation of
existence…
everything is an interpretation…even reality…
Kropotkin
But Kropotkin, what about science?
yah, what about it?
Kropotkin
[quote=“Peter Kropotkin”]
in my last post, I spoke of the silent and undeclared
war between the workers and the businesses that employed them…
a war that focuses upon the way business treat employees as
a means to an end… where employee’s have little value outside
of being a creator of profits…
and that is their only value… not as being human beings with hopes,
dreams, values or love… for values do not make or increase the only
goal of business’s which is profits and everything is devoted to making
profits…
so, what is one possible response an worker can make to this attempt
to negate or dehumanize workers?
by ART… Aesthetics… we can redeem our values in our attempts
to create and become something different in our attempts in creation…
I can declare my dreams, my hopes, my love in ART and in living
an Aesthetic life… where I seek beauty and seeking what “TRUTH” that
lies in ART and the Aesthetic…
in the act of creation, I proclaim my human needs, that rise above my
value as a worker… I am no longer a consumer or producer…
I am a human being when I seek ART or the Aesthetic…
so, Kropotkin, should everyone just quit their jobs and sit around
the house and paint? that isn’t such a bad idea…and it would
cause people come closer to their human side…
the goal of existence is the creation of material goods that can be sold
in which someone makes a profit at… no, a thousand times no…
the point of existence lies in the overcoming or going from
animal to animal/human to becoming fully human…
the goal of existence is to find out what it means to be human…
not to put food on the table because that is a lower level function
that is no different then what the animal do…
and I am above animals because I can dream and hope and love
and seek justice… it is these values which makes me human, not
the day to day existence of putting food on the table or making ends meet…
because we think the basic function of being human is to engage in the
lower level of existence, of fulfilling the lower needs of food and water
and shelter and education and health care… no, that is living an
animal existence… to become human I must rise above that and
seek such goals as love, belonging, safety/security and self esteem,
and when those needs are met, I can reach the highest level which
is the level of reaching the self-fulfillment needs… of achieving
one’s possibilities and potential… be like Goethe or Shakespeare and don’t
be like an animal… just seeking the lowest possible level of existence…
reach above the lower level of existence by making your existence about
getting food or water or shelter or education… but seek your higher
possibilities by going beyond such lower levels…
the act of work… the business of being a producer keeps us from
achieving our possibilities… of becoming human…
our seeking is no longer the seeking of the lowest level but
of seeking the higher levels of love, self esteem, of safety
security, of belonging… and then reaching self achievement…
think of becoming human…not just a worker or a consumer…
but think about the act of creation which is the act of becoming
human…
K: and to continue on this line of thought…
I have called my job, as checker, factory lite… all I do is scan items
and weigh produce and put in a code… bananas is 4011… organic
bananas is 94011… and I am judge by the corporation if I am wrong
in putting in the wrong code…
not too long ago, a gal from corporate came to our store… they have
been pushing, hard, the fact that we have to scan all produce
and they keep track of that and If I am not above 70%, I could
be considered to have a “work issue” which is punishable…
I could be given a verbal warning, a written warning and then
fired for not scanning in all produce…this is very machine like…
to ensure that every worker does the exact same thing which is to
scan produce… and you doubt my factory lite description…
you might say, what is the problem? just scan the dam produce…
easy said then done because a vast amount of produce do not
have stickers on them to scan… for example, take Garlic…
where and how, would you put stickers on a glove of garlic?
you really can’t, so you must manually enter the code, 4608…
and thus you are in violation of the rules which can lead one
to being fired… but if you can’t scan produce, how are you supposed
to follow their orders? you can’t… but that isn’t important to them…
the fact is they don’t give a shit if there are stickers on the produce or not,
you have to follow their orders without reservations or that is insubordination…
and that is the greatest crime in America today…
I don’t see how I can get around their demand that I scan all produce when
half the produce do not have stickers…and yet I am still accountable for
scanning the produce… this is how corporate America works… holding
employee’s responsible for actions taken at the corporate level…
and punishing those who fail to accomplish which is clearly impossible
to accomplish… but businesses and corporations refuse to hold themselves
accountable… and thus must hold employee’s accountable for the corporations
failures…to escape accountability by upper management…
and yet, where do the vast profits go to in corporate America?
certainly not to the employee’s who do the actual work…
it goes to those who have done the least to do the actual physical
work of making a business succeed… the CEO of my corporation made
over 10 million dollars a year last year… I made, roughly 33 thousand last year…
and who among us did the actual physical work? certainly not the CEO…
and with his golden parachute, he can fail and still make millions, whereas I simply
get fired without anything including unemployment benefits…
how is that right, fair or just?
I am a expendable factory lite worker… with no possibility of
changing it…not at my age…
Kropotkin
I have been hard at work of late and haven’t had much of a chance to write
here…but an idea that has come to mind of late…
the connection between one’s philosophical viewpoint and one’s
political viewpoint…how I view politics in terms of what I
hold to be true philosophically…
given my political viewpoints, can you understand my philosophical
viewpoints…
I consider myself to be a continental philosopher…
which means what?
that I hold to certain viewpoints that identify me as a continental philosopher…
I hold to people based philosophy… I write about German idealism and existentialism
and I hold to some, not all, but some Hegelian, Freudian and Western Marxist ideals…
or to think about it a different way… I don’t believe in language analysis or
use of formal logic or mathematics is the way to engage with philosophy…
to engage with philosophy, to me anyway, is an engagement with people…
what it means to be human and how do we engage with our possibilities…
the word “possibilities” is the word that identifies me as a liberal…
the word “Power” is a word that identifies one as a conservative…
I have no interest in such banal things as money, power, fame,
titles… only a conservative would engage in such baubles…
or so says my liberal viewpoint…
or said another way, what is the point of existence? what is the meaning
of life?
I believe that answer hold true for both philosophy and, and politics…
to seek out philosophy is to seek out my individual possibilities and
to seek out the political is to seek out our collective possibilities…
philosophy is one way of understanding one’s individual place or role
within the universe…the political is to seek out our place or role
within the universe…
for me anyway, the philosophical and the political are two sides
of the same coin…we are here and where do we want to go?
that answer is both philosophical and political…
if you look at philosophers in the past, most were on some level,
also political philosophers… Locke and Hobbes for example…
they were both engaged in both philosophy and the political…
Descartes wasn’t a political philosopher and yet, Spinoza and
Leibniz were both philosophers and political…
Kant was not and Hegel was…and Marx studied the law and
Philosophy in school…and over the years it has become harder and
harder to separate out one philosophy and politics…
20th century philosophy is full of philosophers who engaged in
some level or another with the political…not so much the Analytic
philosophers but the Continental philosophers…from Heidegger to Sartre to
Camus to Foucault to Derrida…were all in some way, both philosophers
and engaged with the political…
the best American example is Noam Chomsky…who is far better know for
his political beliefs then the fact he is a first rate linguist and cognitive scientist
and philosopher…
so what should the role of a philosopher in the political?
so, I equally engage with philosophy and the political… and I make no
bones about it…I see them engaged with the same vision of the
universe…
who are we and what does it mean to be human?
for me, that is as much a political question as it is a
philosophical question…
and I think sometimes, sometimes, the two, the political
and the philosophical cannot be separated from each other…
the two are deeply and irrevocable connected to each other…
so what are your political beliefs and how do they connect to your
political beliefs?
what do those beliefs mean as far as the questions that should engage
us which is, what does it mean to be human and what are our possibilities?
Kropotkin
now let us add this third component, religion…
I am clearly an atheist… so how does this connect to my philosophical
and political beliefs?
I seek what is our possibilities… both individually and collectively…
so, in seeking those possibilities of what it means to be human, I deny
that god or theology or religion offers us any meaning, either
individually or collectively…
I put the human possibilities ahead of the theological possibilities…
when I think about what is possible for human beings, I think philosophicall
and I think politically, but I don’t think theologically…
I hold that the belief in god and religion actually prevents people from
exploring what is possible for them, either individually or collectively…
a belief in god or a belief in religion fixes on into a place where
there is only one possibility… that which is defined by the religion…
whereas I see human beings holding a vast amount of possibilities…
which is best explored by us in relation to the political and
the philosophical, not the religious…
now many are able to connect their religious possibilities with
their philosophical and/or their political possibilities… but I don’t see it…
MLK and Gandhi were both able to connect their profound religious beliefs
into a coherent political and philosophical system…
that religious belief of both was part of their strength…
part of their core belief systems… and more power to them…
for their religious beliefs gave them a base, a home from which
their political and philosophical systems were possible…
I am a modern child… unable to hold onto religious beliefs… of any kind…
Kropotkin
Finally you state something that is observably true.
K: as we are all born after 1800, roughly the start of the modern era,
we are all modern children… kinda the way it is…
Kropotkin
so once again to return to this question of
our political, philosophical and religious beliefs…
and how we come to hold them…
as I have noted before, we are indoctrinated into a set collection
of beliefs that our society, our family, our religion, our state holds…
as I was born in 1959 in the upper Midwest, because of those very
facts, I was indoctrinated into certain beliefs that others born in
the south or the west or on the east coast wouldn’t hold to…
the question is not whether we are indoctrinated, that is a given,
no, the question becomes what do we do to overcome our indoctrinations…
today I hold X, Y and Z beliefs… how much of those beliefs are
part of my childhood indoctrinations and how much are my beliefs
really my own, given that I have overcome my childhood beliefs to
a point… Now in my own family, my mom believes in some sort of
god, where as three of her kids do not and I am one, one sibling kinda, sorta believes
and one totally and completely believes…how do we get from having
the same family to having such a wide spread belief system?
I must note that the 5 children were born over a 25 year stretch and
three different states… family believer was born right in the middle,
3 of 5…to keep track, I am the second of 5…
once again to keep track, my brother is a science/computer geek,
he has a grad degree from the university of Chicago, I am a philosopher/
historian, the soft sciences, my younger sister is a psychologist… so within
one family, you can have a wide spread belief system…
one is retired trying to become mayor of a small Midwest town,
and the other sells houses, the believer…to complete the history…
so how do we, each of us, reach our belief systems given our shared
family history?
so let us look at me… I hold very liberal values, I was an anarchist for
years… roughly 10 years… no one in my family has been or ever will
be as radical as I was…everyone else in my family holds fairly moderate
values with the possible exception of my mom… who might be the second
most radical person in my family… at 85…but she was born during the
depression and thus lived in times that were radical and the country came
as close as it ever did to revolution…
once again, family history must be understood within the overall history of
the town, state and country that one lives in…
my childhood was during the 60’s… I watched TV and heard
Walter Cronkite report the death tolls during the Vietnam war…
and I lived during the era of school drills that had us hiding
under the desk in case of a nuclear war… as if that would do us much good…
I watched TV and saw the entire 60’s play out… I was old enough to have
seen the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show on Feb, 9th, 1964 and I saw
the riots in the streets and the anti-war protests and the marching for
civil rights for the blacks and the women and the gays…
so how much of that plays out in my belief system?
I am a firm believer in the two basic injunctions of philosophy…
One: know thyself
Two: the unexamined life isn’t worth living…
I believe the two injunctions are connected… to know thyself
is to lead a life that is examined… I can only know who I am
by examining who I am and what I hold to be true…
the election of Ronald Raygun radicalized me in ways that no one
else in my family was radicalized…I had lived in California long
enough to see the damage that idiot left here and I was opposed to
him for that reason…it took years for California to recover from
the damage he left…as it has taken years to recover, and in some
ways we still haven’t recovered from the damage his presidency created…
to understand my beliefs deeper, I hold that the collective
is as important as the individual… I cannot hold that the
individual rights are superior to the collective rights…
but I cannot hold that the collective rights are superior
to the individual rights…
Kierkegaard was right to explore the individual aspect of human existence,
but he failed to include the collective aspect as well… you need both to
have a clear understanding of the individual and the collective existence…
for existence is about both the individual and the collective…
I am one and I am part of many…how do we fit the two together?
that is the question we are faced with today…
the conservative holds to the individual and the liberal
holds to the collective… but what is the right balance?
and how do I use my beliefs and value systems to reach
an understanding of that right balance?
I begin with knowing thyself and I examine my life
and my history and my place within the collective…
how will you undertake your understanding of “knowing thyself”
and a understanding of the “examination of existence?”
if the “unexamined life isn’t worth living” how do you understand
what the “examined” life is?
Kropotkin
let us see every age as an attempt to solve the “crisis” of
that age… what is the crisis of our age?
whereas the “kids” around here believe in conspiracy theories
and pedophilia, I hold that the “crisis” of our age lies in more
normal terrain…
we can see our age in terms of several different types of
“crisis”…
one: in terms of understanding how the individual and the collective
fit into each other?
two: we live in “nihilistic” age where systems like capitalism
and communism and Catholicism/ which stands for religions like
Buddhism and Hinduism… promote nihilism that undermines
the values that we should be seeking… which is the positive values
of love, hope, justice, peace, honor… etc, etc…
whereas the current nihilistic systems encourage the negative
values of hate, violence, anger, injustice… etc, etc…
part of the nihilistic systems is the pursuit of negative and false
goals like money, titles, fame, material goods… seeking goals
like these leads us down the nihilistic path… kinda like in Star Wars
where anger leads one down the road of the dark side…
our internal values should dictate to us our actions, not our actions
dictate our values…and this is important…we need values to
dictate to us what our actions should be… so if I hold to love,
then my actions should conform to my value of love…
if I hold to justice, then my actions should conform to the value
of justice…the values decide the actions…
but in our nihilistic society, our pursuit of baubles like wealth
and titles and fame and material goods, decides our values…
such baubles as wealth and titles are empty, valueless…
because they have no goal to reach, no direction that
engages us…they are simply actions that have no goal…
to seek wealth is to seek wealth… there is no other point
to wealth… to seek titles is to seek titles… there is no other point…
to seek material goods has no other point… you simply seek other
material goods and so on and so forth… what is the final value of
seeking material goods? it has no end or point to it…
so we are seeking the wrong thing and that might be another “crisis”
of our age… as I see it to be…
but we have other “crisis” we must face… for example, our
nihilistic system of the pursuit of baubles means that we
have become alienated and disconnected from others
and ourselves…in our seeking this individual goal of
wealth and power and titles and material goods,
we discredit any pursuit of the collective… we speak of
of one, me… instead of pursuing the collective, us…
and once again, what is the proper relationship between
the “me” and the “we”?
in seeking the “ME” instead of the “WE”, we engage in
a form of “Solipsism” that makes the one, “ME” the primary
focus of our attention… we forget that “ME” does not and
cannot be our sole focus of attention…
we survive because of our existence within society, within the “US”…
we cannot survive alone… that is a fact… alone we die…
and so we cannot engage in the mental game of “I” that
separates us and divides into “ME” and the “others”
we need the “OTHERS” to survive… and so we must in some fashion,
include “OTHERS” in our understanding of the world… hence,
we cannot hold to such “SOLISISTIC” values like capitalism and communism
and Buddhism and Catholicism…
It is about “US” and not about the “ME”…
Kropotkin
I have written about one possible means to escape the
“nihilism” that infects our age…here is another possible escape…
by the act of creation… ART… which is the decision between
two or more choices…to decide which path to take is ART…
It is creative…to choose between two philosophies is ART…
and within the act of creation, especially within a conscience
decision to create, lies one possible escape from the Nihilism
of our age… to create is to exist outside of the nihilism
of capitalism and the nihilism of religions of Buddhism and Catholicism
and the nihilism of the political, communism (which isn’t even the political,
communism is economic, not political)
to escape beyond the nihilism of our age requires us to do something
outside of and beyond our nihilism… that is to create something…
ART is the means by which we can go outside of the ism’s and ideologies
of our age that is nihilistic …
in making a choice, which is ART…
we go outside of ism’s and ideologies…
I create, therefore I am…
that is a cure, one possible cure for our modern crisis…
to see the possibilities that lie outside of our current choices…
that is ART…
I construct my thoughts into a creative pattern, that is ART
and that is done by making choices about which thoughts
I put out there and emphasis…to make choices as to which
of my thoughts I shall present here today is ART… to make a choice…
so to escape our current crisis… we must begin by understanding
that to create ART is to create possibilities outside of our current choices…
it is to include the “ME” and the “WE” into a mix that is create by me…
which is ART…
To discover the “how” that is the point of our continuing relationship
between the “ME” and the “WE”… The connection between the “ME”
and the “WE”… how do we, you and me, the individual and the collective,
act and interact together?
ART can show us the way because it lies outside of the “usual suspects” that
we depend on to answer such questions…ART can show us possibilities that
we might otherwise miss which are possibilities that can lead us out of our
current, modern crisis…
in seeking ART, we no longer seek the baubles of our modern times,
money, fame, power, material goods… in ART we seek the possibilities
of existence and therein lies the TRUTH of ART…
Kropotkin
in the modern world, speech is glorified over writing…
we see this in the love of the young for video’s over
using words/language…
but I am hard of hearing, I cannot put speech over writing…
I must put the writing before the speech… which makes me
“Old school” as it were…
my current situation dictates what format I exist within… and my situation
dictates that I work with words and language before speech and the much
hated video’s…
so I engage with writing…what format do you engage with?
Kropotkin
one thing to note, that I don’t refer to “history” as such…
my words, my pronouncements, as it were, are isolated,
separated, outside of history…
that is in fact, wrong… history underlines every word I write…
the foundation of my writings as it were…
you must see what has come before and what will come after, to
make sense of everything I have written…
I not only seek the past, the beginning of the journey, my journey
as well as your journey, but I seek some sort of goal, both
an individual goal as well as a collective goal…
when I write about the indoctrinations of childhood, that is our
individual and collective beginning and when I write about
possibilities… that is our individual and our collective goal…
I am a amateur historian… I have read as many history books as I have
read philosophy books… my understanding of the world comes
from my understanding of history and philosophy… I just don’t often
mention this fact… but I begin with history and end with philosophy…
that is me…
Kropotkin
I am reading a Biography of Heidegger…by Safranski,
“Martin Heidegger… between Good and Evil”
It is talking about Art around 1913 or so…
“Vision, protest, transformation- this was the holy trinity of Expressionism”
Vision… to seek that which is above the current modern vision of
the ant…we are ants and we see life, possibilities, love and everything
else from an ant’s perspective…when we should, should learn at times to fly,
to look at life from eagle heights… a bird’s eye view of life and love and
existence…
Protest…yes, we should protest more often… express our opposition to
what bothers us and what endangers us and protest the banality of life that
we suffer through in our current life…
and the most important word, Transformation…I see man as yet to
transform into being human… in other words, I await man to become
a butterfly… transforming like a caterpillar to a butterfly…
the method of this becoming/transforming is in our overcoming…
and the path as I have laid out is clear…to being with the two basic,
fundamental principles of existence formulated right at the beginning of
our history… one, to know thyself and two, the unexamined life isn’t worth living…
it is through our examination of our values, our experiences, our indoctrinations,
our education that leads us to an reexamination of our values, experiences,
indoctrinations and education…and in our reexamination of existence that
we, slowly discover who we are, who we really are…what values and experiences
and education, doctrines are really ours and what have been implanted into us by
society, the state, religion, family, media, education…
this is reevaluation of values is our path to a transformation of animal/human
to becoming fully human…
and I await for our transformation to arrive, both individually and collectively…
how how are you going to transform from the current modern Ant existence we
lead to overcoming and by doing so, transforming from ant to human…
vision, protest, transformation… the words that can set us free…
Kropotkin
Husserl phenomenology is a study of consciousness…
and who is at the same time studying unconsciousness?
why it is Freud… the very question of the consciousness and the unconsciousness
are being worked out at the very same time…
this cannot be a coincidence…
these two studies are related to each other, because of the
times they were in… deep into the industrial revolution,
deep into the political and economic and artistic and philosophical
revolution going on at the time…the years from 1890 to the war years, 1914…
and it was during and just after the first world war that phenomenology
became the field of study in philosophy…as Heidegger himself was a
assistant to Husserl from 1920 to 1923…
Kropotkin
we are divided and passionate and yet, and yet,
we find ourselves staring into Nietzsche’s abyss…
we have thrown ourselves into seeking the baubles of
existence… money, titles, fame, material goods, power…
isms like nationalism and catholicism…
we know on some level, that these baubles are simply shiny toys that
we play with today but have no real basis for us in our examination
of existence today…
we seek these baubles to escape the recognition that existence for us,
is pointless and empty…
we exists in “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”
and those bauble are our attempts to hide from that “tale told by an idiot”
our modern existence is built upon the distraction that is our current existence
which act much like the “bread and circuses” acted for Rome and does so today
for our modern masses…look at what that Kardashian did today…or how much
money did Brad Pitt pay for that Hollywood mansion?
distraction and circuses…all designed to keep us from thinking about the big
questions of existences…what is the point of existence?
“what am I to hope for?” “what am I to believe in?” “what am I to do?”
and if we are distracted enough, we forget we are living empty, hollow lives,
“most people live lives of quiet desperation”…
and so we frantically seek those baubles of wealth and fame and titles
and power and material goods… to fill that void that exists within our life…
we long for that certainty which would dispel our empty, hollow lives…
so we practice living within our ism’s and ideologies like nationalism
and hatred of the GOP and we call it a day… we have “lived”…
we think we are whole because of the false, empty promise of the baubles of our time…
which we accept as being a complete and full expression of being human…
and it is not…
if my valuation of who I am is based upon the hatred and vitriol
of the right wing hate machine… I am not living a “complete
and full expression of being human”
and what is our simple explanation of what is moral? doing no harm
and what is our simple explanation of immoral? doing harm…
we could find a true expression of who we are and what is possible by
living “Moral lives”… by avoiding doing harm…we could become
more complete and more whole by engaging in what we might call “Moral”
beliefs, actions, behavior and philosophies…doing no harm…
perhaps instead of seeking baubles of money, fame, material goods, titles,
power, we might begin to seek an escape from our empty and hollow lives
by living our lives, Morally… do no harm…
and of course, IAM will want to engage in what happens as often happens
in life when one is forced to take an action that does harm others… sometimes
we have but two choices and both will harm another… how are we to choose?
if we have engaged with real and honest reexamination of values, a
reexamination of what we truly believe in and try to see what values
have been installed by the state, family, society, the media, the church…
and explore those values to see if they are in fact, really are our values…
and we have done that to the best of our abilities, that might, might give
us the grounds upon which we can then decide upon which course of action
we take that will harm no matter which action we take, we can then
make a “better” choice based upon our own real, true values… not
the indoctrinated values of society/state/family/church/media…
I would rather make a clear and firm choice based upon my own known values
to decide upon which of the two evil’s choices I should make…
in other words, if we are clear and open about who we are and what
we value, it becomes easier to make those tough decisions that are
we sometime have to make in which every choice harm someone…
the certainty I need lies in the certainty I have in who I am and
what my values are, my real values…by becoming who I am, I
can then better make choices and decisions…
so, instead of focusing on the “bread and circuses” of our modern world,
we focus on who we are and what is our possibilities…
and we work out our true, real values by a reexamination of values
to determine what values are really our values… not the indoctrinated
values of society/state/church/media/ education…but our real values…
who I am based upon the values I hold… that can make choices
and decisions much easier because we make those choices and decisions
based upon who we really are…
Kropotkin
_
I’d prefer not to be staring into Nietzsche’s abyss Peter… 
I’m in a drôle mood of late and can’t help it, so do excuse me. 
K: to each their own…
Kropotkin
in the modern era… we have had “discoveries” about the basic
nature of human existence…
for example, Darwin book came out in 1859… evolution is another
way to look at human existence…
we have distinct looks at the conscious and unconscious mind,
Husserl and Freud…
we have had extensive look at “Being” by Heidegger and his followers…
we have a vast library of what is economics since Marx… and we still
continue to explore this…
we have explore what it meant to exists without a god… for as
Nietzsche points out, “God is dead” and the more important point,
we have killed him… it isn’t enough to point out that “GOD is dead”
we have to notice we have killed him… and that very vital point is
left out…so we had an extensive look at god and theology since N.
the various political revolutions, in the modern era, the American,
the French, the Russian, have forced us to think and rethink what the
political means to us as human beings…
what all this means is that we have had to rethink the foundations
of human existence since the first great modern event, the French Revolution…
we have to rethink the foundations of human existence with the rise of
the scientific revolution… but science travels slowly and we have had time,
until recently, to keep up with science… but today,
we have yet to incorporate modern science into an understanding
of what it means to be human…
we have, as yet, not been able to incorporate Quantum physics into
a what does this mean to be human? And that failure has lead to something
important…
Human beings are and have been, since the inception of the modern age…
say, 1800… we have been fractured…the various revolutions and
the new explorations into such things as “being” and “consciousness” and
“unconsciousness” and “evolution” and to short hand it, “marxism”…
has lead us to become fractured…both collectively and individually…
there has been no collective theory which unifies the whole that we
have been exploring… “being” and “consciousness” and “evolution”
are simply individual terms with no overall understanding of what
they mean to us as human beings…
we are fractured, individually and collectively because we don’t have
a unified theory that can incorporate evolution and being and
consciousness… the very important aspects we have been exploring
since the French Revolution…
but the question arises… can we unify these quite different aspects of existence…
can we incorporate quantum physics and evolution and “being” and
consciousness into one overall understanding of our existence?
of the universe we live in?
if we focus on the individual aspects of existence, say “being” we miss all the rest
of what it means to be a human being in this universe, at this time and place…
or if we focus on the evolution aspect of existence, we miss other aspects of
existence…
we cannot hold to a single vision of our existence… we must
engage with large aspects of existence to explain or understand
what it means to be human…so for Marx to try to explain that
all of human existence is found in the study of economics is simply
false… to be sure economics play a role, but just a role, just
as the political and the social and philosophical and the scientific plays a role in
what it means to be human…
I think being fractured, individually means that one has gone deeply into
what it means as a human being… and seeing our understanding of existence
is fractured, we too are also fractured…
Kropotkin
In my reading, by Safranski, Martin Heidegger ‘Between Good and Evil’,
biography, I came across this sentence…
“According to Windelband, the natural sciences seek general laws, the humanities
seek understanding of the individual”
and I see this statement is incomplete… the humanities should seek the individual,
but it also must seek an understanding of the individual within a collective situation…
the individual yes, but also within with a understanding of how a human being fits
within a society and the state, in such a way as individuals can fit into society/state
in regards to economically, politically, socially and philosophically…
human existence is not only individually but is collectively… it takes a village…
Kierkegaard was right to pursue the individual, but he missed the boat by
not finishing his understanding with a sense of how that “Kierkegaardian
individual” fits into the state and society…
he finished half the mission, but he failed to complete it…
Kropotkin
and the very next line in Sufranski is this:
“Put differently, in Ricket’s words, natural science examines facts,
while the humanities examine values”
we cannot just pursue facts, we must engage with values…
what values are the values that we should engage with…
by the pursuit of IQ45 tilting at windmills, overturning the election,
they miss the vitally important task of understanding why we have rejected
IQ45… because of his failed and dangerous values that negate and deny
what it means to be human…IQ45 pursues nihilism in his values
and we ought to be investigating positive values…
what value is your value?
and why that value?
see yourself in terms of your value, not in terms of actions taken, but
in terms of the values which determine your actions… the values decide
the actions… and by choosing your values, you can then decide in your actions…
Kropotkin