a new understanding of today, time and space.

[Dan~]

we cannot, cannot find our happiness/pleasure if we are not being
treated equal, either legally, economically, socially or politically....

This doesn't seem historic.

[Peter Kropotkin]

we cannot, cannot find our happiness/pleasure if we are not being
treated equal, either legally, economically, socially or politically....

This doesn't seem historic.

K: think about it...if you are not being treated equally, if you are being
discriminated against, if the law or society or the political or the
economic is failing you...how do you find happiness?

I mean I have a job, remarkably shitty job.. it is a major factor in
my life, I spend over 30 hours a week in this shitty job...in fact, I spend more time at
my job then I do with my wife.... and all that shittyness affects me...I can't be
happy if I am being treated like shit at work....how can anyone be happy when
they are being treated like crap at work, on the streets, politically or socially?

or how am I going to be happy if I am lacking in the basics, food, water, shelter,
warmth, education, health care?

How is one suppose to be happy when they are hungry or living in extreme
poverty?

Happiness is the stuff that happens after we have taken care of the basics....

one cannot be happy if one is facing injustice socially, politically, economically,
or legally... it just can't happen...

and some of the more sensitive of us, can't feel happy if anyone is deprived of
justice and equality and the basic's necessities that the rest of us take for granted....

as I have grown older, the weight of the world has grown steadily stronger....
I am more aware and thus I have awoken to the cost of my very upscale life...
my life that has no dangers, or I am not threaten by any injustice

I know I will have a house and food and a very comfortable living even if I lose my job
tomorrow... we have some money saved up, not much, but some and I am ahead of
most of my fellow citizens..... nothing threaten my life or my current way of living....

and yet, I know that I am not the rule but the exception....

I am in a far better state to be happy then most people because I don't
have to worry about personal injustice or being targeted because of the
color of my skin or my race, creed or nationality...I am living the good life
and I am closer to being happier then most people.... because my needs are being
met....

the path to happiness lies with our own personal needs being met because
happiness lies on the other side of our need being met...

injustice, regardless of the cause keeps us away from
happiness.....

happiness is a state of mind and anything that disturbs our
state of mind, lessens our chance of finding happiness...
thus injustice and not meeting our own personal needs disturbs
our chance for happiness.....

Upon reflection, I didn't really explain this very well, did I?

I need to work on this.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we have two different theories, among others to choose from...

one is the more democratic, Utilitarian, lowest common denominator
school of thought and we have the Nietzsche school of thought,
that democracy is for sheep and right makes might and so on.....

one theory is about the vast number of people and the other focuses
on the individual... one says, the focus on individuals is elitist
and the other calls democracy a school for sheep...

and the last century has been an under the radar fight to the death
by the two schools....

but I don't see them as opposing each other, I see them focusing on different
aspects of the same thing....
we can hold to democracy and still be individuals seeking greatness
and becoming......
I don't see the two ideas as being in conflict.....

I am voting this year and its not going to be a great surprise as to who
I am voting for... now one may make the argument that voting doesn't
affect anything because of "dark forces" as IQ45 has said and the right wing
loves to believe in, conspiracy theories.... that the world is dominated by
individuals and corporations that really own the world, not us......

the military-industrial complex certainly holds a lot of power but because
we allow it.... the path to recovering our freedom, if this "dark forces" theory
is true, expose it and then defund it... take the money away from the
military industrial complex.... if money gives it power, then take away that power....

anyway, to return to my problem...

we can belong to the masses and still strive for
greatness.... If I seek what is best out of me,
by seeking my possibilities, then it doesn't matter that
I vote, that I watch baseball games, that I hold
"that all men are created equal" and I buy shampoo.....

I can be of the masses, being part of the "unwashed masses"
and I can still work on my becoming my possibilities....

this two sides of the problem is really just one side being focused
on the individual, becoming who we are and the other side is
focused on the vast majority of people who exists and just
have their needs taken care of.....

and in fact, this is the right way to go about it.... for we are social beings,
we must exists within the framework of
"government for the people, by the people, of the people"

but holding to democratic ideals doesn't mean we don't seek our own
greatness in seeking our possibilities... we can do both....

we can be part of the great democratic society and we can also
seek our own becoming and possibilities...

in fact, I see our democratic roots as being an essential part
of who we are.... I am part of a large group of people...
we can break people down into categories if we so wish,
to being white, or to being male or to being Jewish or
to being an American, and for me at least, these designations or attributes
are unimportant because they are accidental traits of birth...
I am male, I was not given a choice, I was born an American, I had no choice,
but today, I am an atheist, which is a choice,
and that is the point, we have some choices we can make and we have
other choices made for us.. accidental traits of birth....

we are born human.. and that is not a choice... I am a social creature
because that is the way evolution has created human beings...if nothing
else the pandemic did, because of the social isolation caused by us
distancing from each other, we have seen the fact that human beings
are social creatures.... we cannot exists apart from each other..
our very needs demand that we must come together if for nothing else,
to stand next to each other.... we are forced by a million years of evolution
to need each other... we must continue to have contact with other human beings
or we go nuts... and that is a scientific fact...

so, when I am part of the democratic majority, I am still obeying the
fundamental criteria of being human... standing with my fellow human beings...

we cannot do anything else.... so the need to be part of something larger
then us is built into us by evolution.... and standing with other human beings,
both physically and emotionally and psychologically is a primary need of
human beings... democracy fulfills that need.....

we are part of something when we hold to the political ideal of democracy...
it fills one of our fundamental needs of human beings to stand with each other....

a monarchy or a dictatorship does not fulfill our basic human needs to
share or be a part of each other lives... a top down political system
doesn't fulfill our needs to have some say over our lives within
a group situation....that need is best filled by large scale political
systems such as a democracy......

it is human needs that drive us into a democracy and not automatically
into a dictatorship or a monarchy......

and within those basic human needs of having some say in our lives
and connecting with other human beings, we can seek our own private
destiny by seeking our own possibilities within what is possible for us
individually....

thus I believe there is no conflict between for a social, everyone involved
political system and the seeking of what is possible for us... individually....

that might be the most desirable way to go, a political system that
acknowledges our fundamental need of being social and our need to
overcome who we are which is individual....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

As I work shortly, I will be brief....

think of existence as a flat existence... the water level when
we look at a lake or an ocean, we see a flat level with no up or down...
just level..

and human existence lies at that level, we exists basically on
a flat level with no up or down... so we are born, we live
and we die on that flat level.....so far so good.....

there are millions upon millions of people who cannot imagine
anything above or below that level of flat existence.....

but we see some who rise or go below this flat level of
existence....

those who rise above this level, they are the ones we put up statues to....
Gandhi, MLK, Jesus, Einstein, they force us to look above ourselves....
to see what is above human existence...science and political activism
are two possible ways to see something above our flat surface of existence...

but we can also look down.. and that is those who seek an understanding
of what it means to be human... they look into us and dive below the surface
and try to see what motivates and drives us.... this downward, below
the surface level stuff is done by thinkers, philosophers and psychologist...
they explore the lower level stuff that make human beings, human.....

personally, I am attempting to combine the two, the rise up
and the look down...those who look up, they don't tend to
become involved in what it means to be human.... they simply
accept it is something and the important thing to them is not
what is human, but what actions human can do....

those who look below, they aren't interested in the "what actions
can human beings do" but what is a human being and what
drives them, motivate them, allows them to reach for the
stars....

so, I have done both, I have given the motivation understanding
of what it means to be human, but also, what should we strive to be...

the two aspects of human existence... the drive to do something
and what it is we should do....

Marx was wrong... we must understand the world and, AND we must
strive to change it...

I hold as my basic proposition that man/human beings are flawed
and any society we create will also be flawed because we are flawed...

so the first bit is to understand how the state/society/family/economic is
flawed...the lower level work

then we must strive to work on improving ourselves, we must strive to
become... which is the higher level of action....

the formula is understanding, the lower level, and then action, the higher level....

we must engage in both understanding and action....

and any who says, we must understand, only has half the formula,
and those who proclaim actions as primary, has only half the formula....

we must, as human beings, engage in both sides of the formula...

both understanding and actions....

so, we can say human beings are X, Y, and Z...
thus we can/must act in a certain fashion...
which incorporates, action must incorporate
X, Y, and Z....as a fundamental principle...
but as a starting point for our actions....

any successful action must have at its base, an
understanding of what it means to be human....

the two need each other.... so what is your base understanding
of what it means to be human and thus you can then
decide what actions you will engage in to change the world....

understanding and then actions.... the formula...

U = A....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Salvation: preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss....
(one's salvation) a source or means of being saved from harm, ruin or loss..

salvation is the religious idea that humankind needs to be
delivered from such fundamentally negative or disabling such as
suffering, evil, finitude, and death...or what is called life...
life is a fundamental and disabling condition from which we need
salvation from....

every religion in some fashion or another, offers up salvation....

almost all the major religions are salvation religions... from ancient Egypt to
today...along with such religions, not posted in any order,

Hinduism
buddhism
Judaism
christanity
Islam
zoroastrinanism
mormonism
Jainism
sikhism...

are all versions of salvation religions...

this need to be saved is strong in human beings....

and I'm not going to ask why, but wonder about its implications for us....

before the great revolutions of science, politics, philosophy, and industrial...
the thousands of years had just as many disasters as we have had in our modern
era... but they had something we didn't have, which is a salvation religion to
give them hope....

since beginning of the modern era, which we shall call the French revolution,
1789..... we have lost a great deal of faith in religions... whereas
before when disaster struck, they had faith and their salvation to turn to,
but what do we have to turn to when disaster strikes?

how do we find salvation from our current/modern condition that is negative
or disabling, such as suffering, evil, finitude, death?

where I live, the entire SF bay area is covered by the smoke from the various fires....
at times, it has been pitch black outside from the smoke and other times,
a very weird orange color... it is rather bizarre and quite depressing....

where do we turn to, to find salvation to ease our minds from the
collective disaster that has been 2020?

and that has been the real question of the modern era... how do we find
salvation without religion?

if you are a humanist like myself, you find salvation within the collective
of humanity, called the human species....

but many, including many here, who have thrown their hands up
in despair and proclaimed a "pox on all" for not providing an easier
method of salvation.. and that provide an answer to this modern age....

for we seek easy answers to our salvation.... we don't seek the hard answers but
the easy, little work as possible answers.... and thus we turn to dictatorships
like Hitler, Stalin and Trump...

it is easier to pawn off our troubles on someone else and say, fix this....
but that path is the path to failure, for no one can fix what is wrong with
us except us....if I have an issue that needed fixing, what are my possible
solutions?

I can turn to an "expert" and have them tell me what to do, which is the
easy path to take because I can escape responsibility of my actions by saying,
hay, it was my "expert" who didn't/couldn't answer my questions.....
and they failed me... I was/am innocent if my problems are still here....

or I can take the hard path and accept responsibility for my own self
I cannot pass the blame if it goes wrong when I am in charge....

in other words, salvation religions are popular because they allow
us to escape our own responsibilities for who we are and what our
actions are....

the new path of the modern world must be we stand firm and
take responsibility for who we are and what we have done.....

we no longer pass the guilt onto others... we accept the guilt
for who we are and what we have done...

unlike salvations religions, we can no longer deny what life really is,
it is full of suffering, evil, finitude, and death......we cannot find salvation
from those fundamental aspects of life....

so we accept them... life is full of suffering and has evil within it and
has finitude and death as a key aspects of life.... do we run from that
or do we find salvation in religions that allow us to escape responsibility
for who we are and what we have done?

or do we simple accept that life is full of suffering and evil and finitude
and death.... it is what it is... and we don't deny it or hide it or escape
responsibility from it....

is life something to plead guilty from?

I am alive and that is by its very nature, evil or full of suffering
or finitude or full of death....

but I am not defined by those aspects of life.....

that they are part of life, yes, but I am not defined by it......

I am defined as I choose to define me.... I am not defined by
life being evil or full of suffering or finitude or death....

there is no reason to seek salvation given life is what it is...

I simply accept that and move on...I can now become who I am
and I can define myself that way...

I don't need to or want to define myself in terms of salvation religions...

being alive is not a crime or something to be saved from...

because an equal aspect of the salvation issues, suffering, evil,
finitude and death lies other aspects of life.. aspects that give
life as much meaning as our salvation issues.....

things such as beauty and love and hope and justice and peace....

these thing are not only equal to the salvation issues, but I believe
that they are greater then the salvation issues.....

the search for such things as beauty or truth or justice can fill last
one's life and be of greater value then the woe is me type of life.....

I don't need to find salvation from the search for beauty or truth or justice or
hope....

and these values exists just as surely as evil and suffering does.....

so, when we seek, let us seek the higher, more positive values
of existence..... we don't need salvations religions to give
our lives value....because they are negative and disabling issues...
evil, suffering, finitude and death are not positive and uplifting
values.... they are negative... why seek negative values when we
have positive and uplifting values to seek like beauty and truth
and hope and justice.......

so it is a choice... do you chose negative values like evil, suffering,
finitude and death or do you choose hopeful and positive values
like seeking beauty, truth, hope, justice and love?

so what is your choice?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

ok, let us personalize this....

How do I achieve salvation in this modern age?

what are the methods available to me?

I can go religious, find salvation via some religion...
be it, Islam or Judaism or Buddhism or Christianity...

but that seems to me to be abdication of taking some sort
of responsibility for who I am and what I have done...

I leave my own personal salvation in the hands of god......

I say, Judge me.....when I have no say over what is being judge......

that is certainly not taking responsibility for who I am or what
I may have done.....

the Republicans often talk about "taking personal responsibility"
but if you listen to them, they deny taking any responsibility for
anything... listen to them blame any number of groups from
gays to immigrants to leftist groups like Antifa to George
Soros to the liberals to women rights groups to feminism
to the media to the "deep state"......

they don't take responsibility for anything....

it is always someone else's fault....

and their indoctrinations into religions reaffirms that abdication of
responsibility, to take accountability for their actions or their inactions
as the case may be....

so, in this modern world, how am I to take responsibility for who
I am and what I have done?

for me, I can accept responsibility because I can take note of my
accountability and accept it.. and then, I can do something radical,
I can vow to do better... and that is our salvation... by not just
accepting guilt but by being better and doing better, becoming
better as a human being.... we can find salvation by accepting guilt
and then trying to do better... if we fail, we have at least tried to
achieve a better version of who we are....

I for one, never think of failure as being final... failure is just
another step along the way, just like suffering and evil and hatred
can be steps along the way of existence....

I am not a final, complete person.....I am simply somewhere
along the path that goes from birth to death... from being animal to
being animal/human and then to being fully human....

where is the guilt in taking the journey of life?

I am innocent because being human is not, contrary to christianity,
being human is not a sign of being guilty... I am alive and that isn't
some admission of guilt.. that is an admission of the fact that I am alive.....

and the question now becomes, what is next?

in my existence, I shall be faced with suffering and evil and finitude
and then death... so should I focus my short available years feeling guilty
about being alive?

I don't think so... I should focus on the things that make life worth
living for, beauty, truth, seeking justice, hope and love....

my life isn't so long that I can waste years engaged in feeling guilty
about something I had no control over....either feel guilty or
do something about it....I would rather do something about it....

I am not in this life to be passive or wait for something to happen...

I can engage in the life I have by becoming who I am
and by going from animal to animal/human to becoming
fully human....

the path into the future simple requires us to make a choice...

what choice will you make?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

I liken our human situation as this....

when on Halloween, at night, and we walk past a graveyard and we are frightened...

we will ourselves past the graveyard, we whistle and think positive thoughts
in hopes of avoiding the "bad" "evil" aspects of a graveyard at night...

but we fail to understand that what is worse then a graveyard the possibilities
of evil creatures out to get us, is the fact that there is nothing in the
graveyard... it is empty... that is far scarier to human beings then
a graveyard full of creatures like vampires and ghosts and zombies....

for us, this emptiness of existence is far more disturbing then
any creature of night....we have charms and prayers and
talisman that allow us to walk past the graveyard with without fear.....

but tell me, what charm or prayer or talisman will fill you with hope
if you discover that you are all alone in the night?

a human being would rather face monsters and dragons and zombies
rather then fact existence alone.....

a god might be for you or against you, but at least he exists
but what about the silence of the universe?

How do we find salvation in the universe if there is nothing in the
universe outside of us?

Pascal understood that the emptiness/silence of the universe is far scarier
and more frightening than any possible monsters we can conjure up....

listen to your voice and think, is that the only voice in the universe?

that is why we so need other human beings.......

we are social creatures for a reason and that reason is the emptiness
and silence in the universe...

it is far easier to go out and slay the dragon or kill Darth Vader
or fight the enemies of "evil" whatever evil that is....

but to "fight" the silence, the emptiness of our lives? how do we do that?

how do we find meaning in the silence in the night? How do we
overcome the emptiness that lies at the heart of our existence?

how do we find salvation?

Kropotkin

[Ecmandu]

Salvation?!?! Stop being a moral nihilist who denies reality. You and iambiguous are poor kindergarten students.

Have you figured out what philosophy is yet?

I’m dropping the mike on both of you right now.

https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 2#p2775572

Debate me and see what happens “seeker of truth”

[Peter Kropotkin]

Peter Kropotkin: Salvation: preservation or deliverance from harm, ruin, or loss....
(one's salvation) a source or means of being saved from harm, ruin or loss..

salvation is the religious idea that humankind needs to be
delivered from such fundamentally negative or disabling such as
suffering, evil, finitude, and death...or what is called life...
life is a fundamental and disabling condition from which we need
salvation from...."

K: this is from an earlier post...the question becomes, for the modern man,
we seek salvation from what? what harm, ruin or loss or perhaps we seek salvation from
suffering or evil, or finitude or even death? perhaps we see something no other generation
has seen before us, which is the unreality of our world.......

I work 30 plus hours a week and for what? it certainly doesn't benefit me...
I make so little that we are two paychecks from being on the streets...

I have been supporting myself since I was 17 and I have nothing to show
for my 43 years of blood, sweat and tears...

one might answer, but Kropotkin, you have feed yourself and house yourself
and clothe yourself....you mean, I have lived an animal existence for the last
43 years where all I have accomplished is to have the basics, bottom level of
existence, food, water, shelter, education (and I didn't even have that as I
never went to collage) and health care...

I have achieved nothing more then what animals achieve in their daily existence.....

I have risen no higher then an animal.....in 43 years of hard, painful existence.....

perhaps the modern age has discovered the truth about our human existence.....

it is meaningless and pointless and without any purpose........

we struggle in our daily pursuit of putting food on the table and by doing so,
we miss what is truly important about being human....

we are more then just Homo economicus...

we are human beings, capable of so much more then just..
"attempting to maximize utility as a consumer and economic
profit as a producer"

when I come home from work, all beat up and exhausted, I ask myself,
really, is this all there is? is my existence going to a job I hate
and create profits for others, to benefit others with my work, my effort
but I gain very little in return... that that what my existence is all about?

where I create profits and benefits for others who own the means of production
and I get basically nothing for my efforts? is that why I have spent 43 years working?

one might say, well Kropotkin, leave, get another job, but this failed thinking
believes that there are options and in a capitalistic society there are no options.....
I cannot get a job outside of the capitalistic structure where I am producing profits
for others from my work and effort.... for every single business attempts to gain profits
and the only way to do so is to exploit its workers, there is no other option in the
capitalistic world.... to be exploited or to exploit.. to be an owner and exploit
others, to create profits off of their hard work and efforts.....or be exploited as
a worker.....

the discontentment, the modern malaise, the sterilization of the modern age arises
because we are the first generation to discover man true position in existence.....

the entire modern world is tied up in the nihilism of capitalism and exploitation....

we have become the modern slaves upon whose back our modern world is built upon.....

there is no third choice in our modern existence... either be a slave and be exploited
or be a master and exploit others....the modern world is very clear about it.....

you are going to create profits or you are gone.. you have no other value in the
modern world....it is this creation of profits that drives everything in the modern world....

so how are we to find salvation from the modern world which demands
we give our body and soul to the creation of profits regardless of the cost to us......

we have seen for the first time, the nihilism of the modern world that
devalues and dehumanizes human beings and their values......

so the question still stands, how do we find salvation from a world that
devalues and dehumanizes us for the sake of profits?

our modern world is pointless and meaningless and without value because
it devalues and dehumanizes us, to the point of nihilism... how do we survive
a nihilistic world? how do we find salvation from a world that engages us
as animals? not as animal/human or even fully human, but the world
treats us as animals that are easily sacrificed at the alter of profits......

and how do I find salvation from this?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

one of the Kantian questions, "what am I to do?"

when I was a young man, I wanted to be one of two things....
One was a baseball player and the second, was to be president of the U.S....

One day, I woke up and realized that, in fact, those two things weren't what I
wanted to do.....they were indoctrinations from my father.. it was what he
wanted to be when he was growing up and he didn't succeed in reaching
those goals.....and as often the case, the son is a substitute for the father
and the son attempts to reach the goals of the father.....as with many sons,
I walked away from my fathers dream......but on that day, something else
happened..... I lost one dream, but I never replaced it.... to this day,
I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up....I still don't know
what it is I am suppose to do.....much of the so called "important"
professions of being a policeman or a lawyer I couldn't do because
of my hearing loss... I was limited in the possibilities I could achieve....
and so, I spent years, decades in fact, aimless wondering, taking whatever
jobs I could get....

I couldn't for the life of me, think of something worth while to do...
no job/career had any value to me... a job, any job was simple
a waste of time to my mind... and it still is... I don't see the value
of having a job..... I just don't.. I don't see the alleged dignity
or the value of work.... it has always seem to me to be a waste of time....

I never saw myself with any kind of mission in life......

I couldn't see myself being contend with a job, any job and I have
always merely tolerated my many jobs..... they had no value to me....

but here in America, you are defined by your job, you are your job...
it gives one respect and dignity and honor...... no one has less value
in America then someone who is jobless..... your job gives one meaning,
and placement in society and allows one to see what place they hold in
American society......

and I never wanted anything to do with that bogus belief in the
value of working..... working has never been about having some
value to me....

at one job, I tried, really tried to have a job that defined me
and was who I was.... but I was relieved when they fired me,
although I didn't know it at the time...

I have, by all accounts, drifted through my life... drifting
from one job to another to another to another....never knowing
or even caring if the job had any value or worth having...

it was just a job..... I spent years trying to see what I was really passionate
about... it certainly wasn't working, and it wasn't playing all those pretend roles
like finding meaning in being a soccer coach, which I did for my daughter AYSO
soccer team and in seeking some other form of finding my passion....

I never did, to be honest.... I am truly an outside in our society because I don't
see the worth or value of this countries highest held values... like patriotism or
wealth seeking, or the dignity of the job..... I don't hold to those values....

everything everyone says that they are proud of America for, seems to me to
be a waste of time... the values of the south, God, country and guns...
I don't hold to any of those values... I don't seek values that hold to some
silly values that America holds to like god or country or guns or martial values,
of military values that so dominates our American life...

the emptiness of our modern values is apparent to me, is obvious to me....
I don't see any American values worth getting out of bed for.....

and yet, every single day I do get out of bed... and I don't know why......

what do I see as the problem with the "great american values"...
I see that they are too small...they don't rise to any attempt to
reach greatness... they are low hanging fruit on trees instead of
trying to achieve some greatness..... or perhaps, perhaps, I
am attempting to seeking salvation that lies above such minor
themes as patriotism or nationalism or love of country or love of god....

I am interested in the great themes of life, of reaching something
impossible and outside of human reach....I am not interested in reaching
the moon, I want to reach the stars and beyond... I am not interested in
being logical or rational or common.....I am not interested in
the American dream because it is so small and insignificant...
it doesn't achieve greatness or is challenging to gain.....
it pales in significance to real possibilities like becoming who we are
and exploring values that truly say who we are...the battle isn't to
slay dragons or kill Darth Vader but the real battle is to seek out who we
are and what does it mean to be human...I am here and what does it
take for me to become human... truly human....

life is a process, not a series of events that might tie it all together.....

and the process is not out there, but inside of us.....because I
did engage in the process of thinking what does it mean to be human,
I didn't waste those years in the wilderness....I was laying the groundwork
for who I am today......I might not have a job worth much, but I was doing
something more important..... I was seeking answers to questions that
I didn't even know I had...the struggle to become who we are is an internal one,
not an external one....and I struggled all those years to discover what my
questions were....and what my possible answers might be......

I was engaged in something far more important then a mindless job,
and I had many of those, including today, no, I was engaged in seeking
my questions of existence... ...

Kropotkin

[Meno_]

Peter , may I jump into the fray.. Its more the culturally social devolution that's at fault, the capitalistic take take of the primary basis of social relevance, then the mind of work You are doing.

Guessing here, but given the right people, it can significantly effect a less identifiable role as a secondary tally for significance.

Not talking out of my hat, either.

[Meno_]

And more, yes the trick is to enjoy the most mundane jobs is to find screaming funny things in them, and work with them in the nuances of your mind, while thinking of this mantra:


Work is work, doctor lawyer Indian chief. About the follies of capitalism:


Here is one: Long ago in a long away place , there was a guy , Mr. Kodak.

He was ok, until after the roaring 20's when after the party, the Great Depression followed and Mr. Kodak lost some 200 million, billions in today's dollars, out of far far more, and then killed himself.

Why? Who knows. Meaning what? He didn't enjoy him self , his work, cause he did work some.

In an extremely diverse , new, relative world, if God does exist as he does and should exist, the only thing that matters is the smile on a little child.

My biggest joy nowedays is trying to see my 5 year old grandson 1 hour a month, accompanied by his father who overdosed my daughter out of jeolousy.

California's incredibly liberal laws do not prosecute fentanyl related deaths for homicide, as
other states do.

This is the abject horror I have to lived with on a daily basis, and now I'd really like a job, any job, so I could contribute to his upkeep .....

Peter I always think of the varieties of experience with which we have to daily get up and face the music.


And only lately , found God's presence as the court system relented and allowed that one hour to see him, and for that I promised god that I will support my grand son and try not to dislike my son in law, in spite of everything that went down.

I pray constantly for him that he will take care of the little tyke, and think back to the time when him and my daughter were high school sweethearts, long. before they got into drugs.

But no one cares to consider a philosophy phd. dropout and law school dropout with nothing but 30 years of driving under his belt to show on a resume.

So you got Yourself. fallow under achiever.


Too bad we could not meet in Europe that summer a while back.

[Peter Kropotkin]

And more, yes the trick is to enjoy the most mundane jobs is to find screaming funny things in them, and work with them in the nuances of your mind, while thinking of this mantra:


Work is work, doctor lawyer Indian chief. About the follies of capitalism:


Here is one: Long ago in a long away place , there was a guy , Mr. Kodak.

He was ok, until after the roaring 20's when after the party, the Great Depression followed and Mr. Kodak lost some 200 million, billions in today's dollars, out of far far more, and then killed himself.

Why? Who knows. Meaning what? He didn't enjoy him self , his work, cause he did work some.

In an extremely diverse , new, relative world, if God does exist as he does and should exist, the only thing that matters is the smile on a little child.

My biggest joy nowedays is trying to see my 5 year old grandson 1 hour a month, accompanied by his father who overdosed my daughter out of jeolousy.

California's incredibly liberal laws do not prosecute fentanyl related deaths for homicide, as
other states do.

This is the abject horror I have to lived with on a daily basis, and now I'd really like a job, any job, so I could contribute to his upkeep .....

Peter I always think of the varieties of experience with which we have to daily get up and face the music.


And only lately , found God's presence as the court system relented and allowed that one hour to see him, and for that I promised god that I will support my grand son and try not to dislike my son in law, in spite of everything that went down.

I pray constantly for him that he will take care of the little tyke, and think back to the time when him and my daughter were high school sweethearts, long. before they got into drugs.

But no one cares to consider a philosophy phd. dropout and law school dropout with nothing but 30 years of driving under his belt to show on a resume.

So you got Yourself. fallow under achiever.

Too bad we could not meet in Europe that summer a while back.

K: I am sorry to hear about your daughter.... I suppose we all have
a story to tell... but how does that story influence our outlook on life,
our philosophy as it were....I too wish we had meet, but that is just another
brick in the wall........


perhaps our motto ought to be: "Fellow Underachievers Unite"

or FUU... half way to fuck you world......

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

during my long hours of work the last couple of days, I
have been thinking about salvation......

what is salvation in the modern world?

I think the pursuit of wealth is a form of seeking salvation....

the wealthy, the Bill gates and Bezos are the ones who have found
salvation, but what about those who are poor? how do they find salvation?

we have secularized the idea of salvation in the modern world....

to those who follow the modern rules.... the modern 10 commandments.....

thou shall not commit insubordination....
thou shall be on time......
thou shall put the company first, even above family....
there is nothing holier then profits....
keep your nose to the grindstone....
the heaven of modern day is the house in the suburbs.....
to deny capitalism is sacrilege....the heresy of the highest order....
one must sacrifice for the good of the company.....
one cannot speak of the company in anything but glowing terms......
the company cannot do any wrong........

we have shifted the feelings of the Medieval man who held
the church in the highest regards to the modern day church which
is the company....when we pray today, it is to the capitalistic
church of profits......

the lords prayer is now to the church of corporations and to profits.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

there can be no doubt that the main component
of the modern age is the soul sickness that infects our
modern age.....

it has been written about and debated since the late 1900's....

it was clearly obvious and written about at the time, in "fin de siecle Vienna"

An writing of the 20th and 21st century could be an accounting of our modern
soul sickness.. from the barbarism of the first world war to the Holocaust
to the dropping of the atom bombs at the end of the war right down to
the My Lai massacre in the Vietnam war and to a poll in which 57% of Republican
voters thought that 180,000 Covid-19 deaths were "acceptable losses".......
(this poll was done around Aug 22)

so the obvious question becomes, from where does this soul sickness comes from?

how has it become possible that we have so degraded life, human life into
180,000 deaths being acceptable?

the nihilism of the modern age has so warped our ability to
see ourselves as having value. We moderns have been so devalued
and dehumanized that we don't even see ourselves as having any value
or worth....and this state of affairs has lasted for over 120 years......
so in understanding the origins of our current nihilism/ devaluations,
we can look to the revolutions of the las 500 years... the scientific,
the political, the social and the economic revolutions........

each one in its own way, has been a stepping stone to the contributions
of the nihilism of our modern way...

we see in the political revolutions of the American and French revolution,
the notion of politics as being an mass affair... politics is a mass movement,
this is the lesson of the two political revolutions....

the scientific revolution showed us scientifically, that we are just another life
form in the midst of millions of life forms...."we are no longer special"
that is the lesson of the scientific revolution......

the social revolution comes from all the various isms and ideologies that
we see today..... from nationalism to socialism to catholicism to all the other
ism's and ideologies we hold tight to today.....the modern world shape and
function lies in the ism's and ideologies that have dominated out life.....

the economic revolution began with an understanding of the capitalism
ideology...since Adam Smith wrote his "wealth of nations" in 1776...
there is that year again....and it grew from the other great revolution,
the "industrial revolution" ......

where human beings have their worth reduced down to, their entire value
being how much profits can they produce....and how much can they
consume......the modern mantra of consumption and production......

where human beings are nothing more then a commodity to be used
and then discarded when it, it... human beings, no longer have value
because they no longer produce enough profits to justify paying for it........

we have become "it" in the modern world.. nothing more then a commodity.....

if we are simple commodities to be used and discarded, then we have less value
then other resources like money and gold..... we have been diminished
in value as human beings and thus we can, as easily as we are diminished,
we can diminished others and we can easily commit atrocities like the
ones committed during the First World War and the Holocaust....

it is easy if we can only see ourselves as commodities.. and that allows
us to see other human beings as replaceable goods and simple commodities,
nothing more......

our soul sickness comes from our being reduced to replaceable goods
and commodities....if we see ourselves as a commodity, then why should
we see others as human beings?

we are soul sick because we live in a society that devalues and negates us
to being less then profits/ money and even less value then material goods

note how the right wing is all about the protection of property rights,
above the protection of human lives.... you can kill to protect your
property.. meaning property has more value then your life....
this nihilism is part of why we can easily kill others with no
thought involved.....if we devalue people to being less then property,
then we can easily engage in the Holocaust and the Me Lai massacre...

in an era of mass movements that has no place for an individual
person, and in the scientific world of galaxies and atoms and evolution
that has no place for an individual person, and in the economic world
that is about mass consumption and mass production of goods,
that has no place for an individual person......
and in a social world where we have mass media for the millions
and social media that has no room for the individual......
where we see our value by how many followers we have
on twitter......

our soul sickness lies in our very being, being denied in terms
of what we can individually offer to a society that couldn't care less...

we are soul sick because our society has denied our value and worth.....

and I loosely use the words, our society, because we have no real
connection to that society anymore....

we are told what our worth is and what our value is and what we are
supposed to do by the society, the state, the media, the political,
and the economic and the scientific.....

we have no voice in the matters which most directly affect us.....

I, Kropotkin, have been negated just as you have been negated...

and negated by forces that no longer consider an individual
important or of value....

we are soul sick because we no longer have a voice in our
lives... and we no longer matter as individuals......

the only way to salvation in the modern era is by some mass
movement of the political, the economic, the social or
the scientific....

we seek meaning in our being part of some vast mass movement
of millions whereas we must find salvation/meaning in terms of who we
are individually.....we must find some balance in our lives by
by seeing ourselves as individuals and not as some part, a small part,
of some mass movement that so dominates our modern landscape....

I am Kropotkin.... I have value because I am Kropotkin.....

I have value simply because I am a human being.....not because
I am a liberal or a democrat or a commodity or part of some
mass movement......

we shall continue to be soul sick until we can see ourselves
as individuals and see that we have value as individuals,
not as a part of some mass movement....

we must redress the equation to have the individual being equal to
the mass numbers of people.....

I am equal to all the people in the land.... and we shall be soul sick
until we understand that.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

in thinking about this soul sickness, I thought about
an example of how society is soul sick......

I have heard that to be on TV talk shows, one has to
conform to a certain standard of dress for example,
the dress code is absolute that a man must have a
jacket and a dress shirt and dress shoes..
and a woman must wear a dress that fits within a certain decorum....

but why? to give the audience a certain "respect"....
no, it is an way to insure that we aren't individuals,
but part of a mass understanding of how we are to dress....

to conform to a certain dress code is to ensure that the mass
view is acceptable.. and we are denied as individuals in such
a dress code.....look at people who are dress in a unconventional manner....
what does that say to you?

I would suggest that what really happens is that when we see individuals
that are wearing "inappropriate" clothes, that we are in the presence
of being soul sick.... we cannot see individuals as being dressed differently
as being any other value other then a negative value....that is what
it means to be soul sick..... we form judgment about people based on
their clothing because it violates our understanding of what people wear based
on a mass movement of what clothes we should wear.....

in other words, we allow a mass judgement of what we consider to be acceptable
in terms of how we think about people....we have certain standard of dress,
actions, behavior, thought based on the standard of society, the state,
media, socially and politically...our understanding of what is acceptable is
formed by society and the state, not on our own understanding of what is
acceptable....we are told what is and what isn't acceptable in the modern
world and that is soul sick.....

and we will continue to be soul sick until we break free of
being told what is and what isn't acceptable by the state, the society,
the media and economically and politically.......

the battle to become human is a battle to be able to
have standards and beliefs that are one's own, not
the beliefs or standards of the state, society, the media.......

and until we balance out, to make equal our beliefs and the states
beliefs, we are going to remain soul sick......

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

note the rise of the romantic movement of the 18 and 19 century...
when did it begin?

it began with the novel, "the sorrows of young Werther" by Goethe,
written in 1774....and was in full bloom by 1800....once again, note
the years involved...after the scientific, political and economic revolutions,
the American and French revolution, the scientific revolutions and
the beginning economic revolution of the industrial revolution.......

and all through the entire 19 century, the romantic era, was
in many ways the opposite and equal reaction to the mass movements
that still dominate our era.....

existentialism is also a reaction to the mass movements
of the last 200 years.....

to return man/human beings to an equal place in the universe...

the question becomes, how do we return human beings to the equal
and balanced place in the universe?

the various revolutions since the 1500 has changed, forever, our
thinking on what it means to be human... what does the question of
salvation for example, mean once we understand what has happened
because of the social, political, economic and scientific revolutions
in our modern history....

what has the various revolutions told us about what it means to
be human? Does being human mean one is ok with such dehumanizing
and devaluing actions such as the Holocaust and the atrocities of the two
world wars? is that what we have learned from the various revolutions?

have we lost the connection between actions and what it means to be
human? in other words, we cannot call ourselves "good" human beings
if we support or defend such actions that devalue other human beings....

we cannot defend capitalism for example because it devalues human beings
because of capitalism nihilism.... seeking profits before human beings is
nihilism and it is, in part, the reason for our current political, social
and economic dilemma that we face.......

the willingness to discard democracy for dictatorship is a sign
that we have devalued human beings to the point of not caring
what happens to us or to our children....

we have devalued human beings by our economic system of
capitalism and we have reached the point in the program
where some have seriously considered to take actions to
turn this country into a dictatorship..... we cannot separate
out our political and our economic systems.... if we are a dictatorship
politically, then we are also a dictatorship economically and socially....

you cannot separate out a dictatorship into small little pieces....
it is an all or nothing proposition.....

so do we return to a position that is similar to the Romantic
position of post 1800?

no, I don't think a "return to anything" solves our question....
we have to find a new way in which we discover
our individual selves without a return to the old Romantic
vision of the universe......

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

In our brave new world where the individual atom,
the one we call "a human being" has no value...
take a human being, we are made up of billion if not trillion
of cells, atoms, can you name or point out one of the trillion of
cells within our body?

In Communism, the individual is overwhelmed by the vast movement of
history called the "dialectical materialism" ... there is no room in
this vast movement of history for the individual... the individual
is swept away by forces so vast as to make us simply another cell in
the body, a cell within "dialectical materialism"

either we go with it or be drowned with the other dissenters....
how does the individual man fit into this "dialectical materialism?"

he doesn't...there is no place for the individual person within Communism
which is one of my complaints about Communism.... there is no room for
the individual person......

what about the other ism's?

take Catholicism for example.......
is there room within the Biblical story for the individual person?

for example, take this idea of the end times....we are judge as a group...
there is no place within the apocalypse for an individual story.....

a group is sentence to heaven and another group sentence to hell....
the entire story of the apocalypse is a group story with no room
for an individual story...the entire movement of the bible goes from
the one, Adam to two, Eve to goes on with a larger and larger cast as
the story plays out...the story of Jesus takes hundreds of people to tell the
entire story of Jesus.. and the apocalypse takes millions of people to tell
that story....the entire human species at the end, play a part in the
apocalypse.....and what of the one, individual person who is alive at
the end? in such a vast movement as the end times, the one, the single
human being is irrelevant to this vast set piece of god's....

and does the single individual person, the one, play any role
within the story of capitalism?
No, the story of capitalism is the story of the movement of millions
and one person, one individual makes no difference within the story
of capitalism....in fact, the individual is expendable in capitalism...
as a worker within capitalism, I am expendable and management has
made it really clear to us workers at my market......

we literally had people, workers die at work and not
a word was ever said by management about the deaths of these
people and the next day, they were simple erased off the schedule..
like they had never work there...gone and never spoken about again...

I could die at my checkstand and they would pull me out of the stand
and then write me up for dereliction of duty to avoid paying me for that day....
and then erase my name from the schedule, never to be heard from again.....

in fact, they would be pleased because I have worked there a long time
and so they can replace me with someone who makes less money.....
from a management standpoint, it is a win-win.. lose a big paycheck
and replace with someone who makes less money... win-win.....

and that is all I am to my supermarket... an operating expense..
nothing more... and easily replaceable operating expense....

so does any part of my role within capitalism valuable?
nope, I am a miniscule part of both sides of the equation...
the production side, my being a checker and the consumer side,
my buying goods.... I am, in the capitalism viewpoint, easily replaceable....
not more then a cell within the body, one single atom within the
huge complexity that is capitalism.....the vast movement of
capitalism is worldwide and ever growing because to survive it
must grow markets shares to cover the ever increasing price increases....
in other words, inflation forces a business to grow its business or to
loss money... the amount of income a business has must increase because
of inflation which is a constant growth factor within capitalism.....

and what of the individual person within all this income growth
and inflation and market shares? nothing, nothing at all....
a single person is nothing more then a single cell within the human body....

now think of a political system, let us take democracy... the entire
point of democracy is to make sure the majority is able to
hold the power in any democracy... not the individual, the dictator or
the monarch, or the few, oligarchy or an autocracy....

the basic principle of democracy lies within these words....

"We the people"

and where does the individual reside within the phase,
"we the people"?

the single person, the one can only affect affairs as part of
the majority, not as a single person... the one does not matter
within a democracy...... just as one cell is unimportant within
the business of being human.....

every single ism and ideology is an large scale enterprise that does not
include the one, the single individual...... so, how do we give voice
to, return power to the one, the single individual?

without, without compromising the whole, the collective....
we cannot have one single cell in charge of the human body
as we cannot have one human being in charge of all human beings....

thus we have a complex problem.... how do we give voice to the one,
the single human being without compromising everyone, all of us?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

how do we find salvation in the modern world?

we have plenty of knowledge, we know all kinds of things,
what is the distance of the earth from the sun? 93 million miles
and what does 1 + 1 =?
anybody can have knowledge, in fact any 5 year old can have knowledge...
so, what does this knowledge have to do with salvation?

we can find salvation by not just knowing knowledge...
1 + 1 = 2.... the point of this is not the knowledge, but
what to do with this knowledge....

that is wisdom..... wisdom is knowing what to do with
knowledge...... and we can find our salvation by knowing
what we can do with knowledge....

we have a million bits of knowledge, we can fill a vast number
of computers with all our knowledge, but we don't know
what to do with that knowledge... and therein lies our
salvation.....what should we do with our knowledge?

that is wisdom and something we don't know...
with wisdom, we can take information and do something with it..
we can make sense of information/knowledge with wisdom....

and that making sense, that is our salvation......
that wisdom, that is our salvation......

with wisdom, we can begin to understand our place in the world,
our place within our society and our place within the state.......

the old saying, information is money.......no, that is false.....
because you have to know what to do with that information that
matters... to have wisdom enough to make that information make sense.....

we have to reform our entire educational system because all we now
teach is information and how to find it, when we need to teach children
what to do with that information... wisdom is knowing what to do with
the knowledge, the information that the earth is 93 million miles from the sun.....

the information itself is actually irrelevant... we need to understand what
has to happen with that information to make it relevant..... its wisdom
and what we should do with it that we should be engaging with......
not knowledge itself.....

in a world full of information, it is giving that information/knowledge
context is what we should be striving for....

finding wisdom, not information that is our salvation.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

If there was a word in which I would describe human existence,
that word would be empty or emptiness...........

think of the average existence, think of the person who spends
their time at work, an engagement which offers us nothing
that has value...there is no such thing as work having dignity.....
but the question arises, if we didn't work, then what would we do?

let us say our basic needs are met, we have the basic resources to
feed ourselves, to clothe and we have shelter and we have
health care and education... all of these are clear and basic needs
of every single human being....and they are met for every single
human being on planet earth.... then what would we do?

our existence has roughly 75 years to it... take 22 years to be educated...
so we have roughly 53 years to do something... what would that be?

take work out of the equation of what we do and what are we left with?

the Kantian question of "what are we to do?" takes on whole new meaning if
we remove work as part of our life........

personally, I would do what I do on my days off, I read, write, study, think
about what it means to be human in this modern age.....

my life would be no different except I would have the time to engage
in my reading and writing and study.. finally......

I know of people who fill up their empty time, time they aren't working with
doing errands and cleaning the house and in general, keeping busy......

to me, that is a waste of a life...... to just do busy work is a complete
and total waste of existence.. at least it is to me........

I don't see people acting with urgency when engaging in their lives.....
I have a sense of urgency because given my age and the coming physical
decline I must face, I suspect I have maybe 10 years to be able to
finish my work... maybe 10 years and I suspect I shall live for maybe
5 more years after that.. which would put me around 76 years of age....

for me, I think that is a best case scenario for the final years of my life....

for me, I see my end of life as a race to be completed...I have only
a certain amount of time to engage philosophically with existence....
and I feel the weight of my end pressing very hard on me....

I can't waste my last few productive years spent on "being busy"......

there doesn't seem to me to be some other "productive" activity
to engage with outside of understanding what our existence means
and what does it mean to be human.....

I don't see any other worthwhile activity to engage with......

for me the clock is ticking.... so how do I spend my last years?

retirement is a means to continue to study full time and not waste
my time dicking around with such nonsense as work.....
or keeping busy..........

so I fight the emptiness of existence with an engagement with
understanding of what it means to be human.......

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so, we have a question..... Who am I?

Society offers us a mishmash of answers, but the problem
with society answers to the question, "Who am I"
are answers that are static.. in other words, those answers,
those possibilities are unchanging, unwavering.....

society answers include being a consumer, being a producer, add to the
GDP....it is an economic answer and thus passive and stagnant......

what can an consumer do but consume and what is the only thing
a producer can do, that is produce.....those roles, that identity,
is fixed and stationary.... it cannot do anything else....

what other roles, functions are allowed by society?

that of a patriot, a citizen....

once again, that role is fixed and stationary.... there is no movement
if one is just a patriot or a citizen...... what other possibilities lie in
being a patriot or a citizen?

if you accept the role or function offered by society, then you get locked
into that role or function forever....those identities does not offer us
any movement or possible change....stagnation is the only possibility
offered to us by the society's roles and functions.....

let us say, I take the role, the identity of philosopher.....

that isn't sanction by society or the state unless it is set into
the role or possibility of a state run school/university.....
you don't have free thought in collages or university's......

my brother went to grad school at the university of Chicago..
he was there after Milton Freedman left the school...
his field of study was economics...... and he said, not once during
his couple years of study, did they talk about Marxian economics.. not once..
In fact I recall him calling me at the time to gets some information about
Marxist economics because they never talked about it.....

this was in the mid 1980's, so Marxist economics was still a thing as
the fall of the wall didn't occur until 1990/91..... how can he properly judge
something that they refused to engage with?

it would be like trying to study philosophy without talking about Nietzsche....
You can do it but it becomes so distorted that to be almost worthless......

you can't talk about 20th philosophy without discussing Nietzsche.....

so how can you discuss economics without discussing Marxist economics?

so how do we discuss certain matters without some sort of input by
all who have influenced the field...for example, how do you discuss
psychology without talking about William Reich? his name is never
discussed in psychology...and yet one cannot get a true and accurate
understanding of psychology without talking about Reich.....

Reich offers us different possibilities in regards to psychology...
it is not one size fits all that is most of psychology.....
and in fact true of the thinking in most fields....
what are the human possibilities offer to us?

listen to the society, state, media, church, you get a one size
fits all answer as to what are our possibilities?

you can become anything you want unless, unless it upsets
the apple cart in which case you must be silent.....

I hold that to find your true self, your true identity to become
who you are, you must walk away from the extremely limited
possibilities offered by the state, society, media and the church.....

let us take the church for example.... the Christian church praises
Jesus and say, take his words and examples to heart as to
"What a true Christian" is......

Ok, let us do just that... let us follow Jesus example and do exactly
what he did.....when slapped in the cheek, don't punish, but
offer up the other cheek... Jesus was against punishment by the state....
he makes it very clear...in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 5.. he says....

"You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for
a tooth", but I say unto you, do not resist the one who is evil. But
if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also".....

a clear rejection of the classic statement of punishment by the state....

does the church offer you this message of Jesus? does the state?

Jesus offers us this statement: also in Matthew....19:21

"the young man saith unto him, All these things I have kept from my youth up:
what lack I yet?"

Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast,
and give it to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come
and follow me.

But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful:
for he had great possessions....

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, that a rich man shall
hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.....

and then I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of
a needle than a rich man to enter into the kingdom of god....."

is that the message you receive from the church? No, it is not....

and yet it is clearly laid out in the bible, in Matthew...

and if those who claim America is a Christian country, then why do you hide
this message from Jesus himself?

so do we hear this very Christian message from this state, society, the church,
the media..... no, not at all... and why? because the state/society/the church,
the media is only interested in offering you and others, very few options to
"become who you are" the possibilities/choices offered by the state and society
and the media and the church must fit into a small, set number of options for becoming.....

for example one of the possibilities is to be a Gandhi or a MLK, but the
state, church, society, media, all refuse to offer this as a possibility for
us to follow....... you can read about it, but you can't become it....
the same goes for someone like Socrates..... you are not offer
the choice to become Socrates.....to challenge all of the state/society/church/
media messages.... that is a role that the state/church/media and society never,
never offer us to become.... we are not free to choose to be a "gadfly" in our society....
that is frowned upon.... and severely punished by the state/society/media and society.....

how much time in jail did Gandhi and MLK spend?

so, who am I? I might be someone who is a "gadfly" in the American society,
but then I must stand outside of the set number of possibilities offered by the American
society/state/ universities/ church/media.......

then I become a heretic, unamerican, a communist, a fool,
a liberal, and all the others accusations leveled to those
who choose to stand outside of the severely limited possibilities
offered by the state/society/.........

think about it... what possibilities were you offered when you were young?

to become a fireman or a policeman or a spaceman or what I wanted to become
a pro baseball player or to be president... but there are no options beyond of
or outside of those set, fixed possibilities approved by the state/society/media/ church.......

so are your possibilities socially and politically approved of possibilities?

or do you dream of possibilities that lie outside of the small, set, fixed
possibilities offered by the state/society/media......

so, why can't you chase your possibilities?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Socrates died because he was a "gadfly" in Athenian society.....

he was silenced for his standing outside of the possibilities offered
by Athenian society....... and to stand outside of the possibilities
offered by the American society, one must be ready to face punishments
such as jail and even death.... but why? Why must those who challenge
the existing possibilities of the state/church/society/ media be punished?

you even see it here in ILP..... challenge the norms and precepts
of what it means to be an American, and you will be called names
and ignored because it flies into the face of our society limited
and fixed/set possibilities of what it means to be an American?

I might have an audience if I were to praise our government and
our society as being the height of what is possible for human beings....
but I am not because I do not believe that in the American
society/state/media/church can one find all of our possibilities....

I am a lone voice in the wilderness and that is fine for I stand with
good company... Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi, MLK all of whom
were lone voices in the wilderness......and all of whom were
killed for being that voice in the wilderness.....

their words were words that stood outside of their society's possibilities
and choices.... they stood against their own society limited and set
possibilities of what it meant to be human.... not one of them said
that the possible path of being human lies in becoming what their society
had offered.. in fact, they, all of them, rejected their own societies
path of what is possible for human beings.... and they offered up another,
different path, a different choice as to what it means to be human......

my path is to understand what it means to be human and as long as I
follow the already set/fixed path of my society, I will be left alone,
very, very alone....but if I were to offer up a path/possibilities outside
of those already set possibilities, then I would be punished and called
unpatriotic, liberal, unamerican, anti-white among other insults that
would be heaped upon me for daring to stand outside of the set
possibilities offered by my society/state.......

so what possibilities do you see in your life?
and how do those possibilities differ from
your state/society/media/church set/fixed possibilities?

the path to becoming great lies in choosing to take a path that is
outside of the societies/state set/fixed path of existing possibilities
that are being offered to us today.......

what possibilities are you reaching for?

and are you ready to reach for possibilities that will be denied by the
state/society/the media/ schools/ and the church......

and the only path to greatness is to go the less traveled path, away
from the set/fixed possibilities offered by society/state/media......

are you brave enough?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so if we look at the possibilities offered to us by the society/state/media/
church... we see that they are very limited and fixed/set so there is no
possibility of change or movement within that state/society/media..
possibilities.....to accept the state possibilities is to accept a fix and set
possibilities... to become a policeman or a fireman or a spaceman....
or to be fixed by the economic state possibilities of being either
an consumer/producer, one and/or the other, but no other
possibilities exists....

so let us see what it means to accept the state's answers to
what is our human possibilities?

let us say, I become who I am in regards to my job, my career...
I am a checker.. It is possible for me to become, perhaps a
supervisor, or maybe even management.... but that isn't real growth
or a real possibility of change... the final goal is still the pursuit of
profits, the nihilism of capitalism....as its only choice offered to us....
within the economic possibilities... no other choices are allowed in
capitalism..... the set/fixed possibilities of capitalism.....

the only choices allowed in capitalism is to become a producer,
in my case a checker in a supermarket, and to be a consumer,
to consume the products of other producers...... economically,
that is all the possibilities offered to us by capitalism....
there is no other choice........

what if I reject these two economic possibilities?

then what? I am considered to be a "deadbeat" "a leach off of society"
a parasite in the workings of the capitalistic system.....
a moocher...

Mooch: to get or to take without paying or at
another's expense; sponge.....

If I don't follow the possibilities offered by the society/state/media/church/
then I am considered to be a "mooch"........

there is no greater crime in America outside of being "insubordinate"
to the state.....

to follow one's possibilities put one on a collision course with
modern society because we don't hold to the possibilities offered
by the state.. the officially sanctioned possibilities that are the only
ones that the state/society will accept as being legitimate......to be
a consumer/or a producer... be it by being a policeman or a fireman
or a baseball player or astronaut or some other officially sanctioned
possibility.....

to be a Socrates or a Gandhi or a MLK or even a true believer of Jesus,
is to risk being outcast by the state or society....or even a worse punishment
as each of these examples show us........

each of these possibilities stepped outside of the officially sanctioned
possibilities offered by the state/society/media/church.... and each person
was punished....for going outside of or beyond the officially sanctioned
possibilities that was offered by that society/state/church/ media.......

most of us don't have the courage to step outside of the boundaries
of possibilities offered to us by the state/society/media/church...

so, how are you going to answer the question,

"what am I to do?"...

which possibilities are you going to reach for?

are you going to limited yourself to the set/fixed possibilities
offered to you by the state/society/media/church,
or are you going to reach for what is possible for you
even if it goes outside of or beyond what is officially
sanctioned by the State/society/media/church?

that is the questioned, isn't it....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

So, I ask, why isn't part of the American possibilities offered,
to being a Socrates, or a MLK or a Gandhi or a Jesus or even a Karl Marx?

we see those historic possibilities and yet, in America today, they are not
part of the possibilities offered to us as choices we can make?

we can be a policeman or an astronaut or a fireman or a baseball player,
but suggest that we might be a "gadfly" on the American society is
not only dismissed but is actively discouraged.....

why can't we hold to the possibilities of Jesus or a Gandhi or MLK
or even a Socrates or a Karl Marx or a Mikhail Bakunin or Pierre-Joseph Proudhon?

we are discouraged and threatened with punishment if we take as our
own possibilities those choices above.....

a person who understand their own possibilities as being one of the above
choices is to be disown or disavowed by our society........

but why? because of the fact that we are "given" only set and fixed
possibilities that are government/ socially acceptable......

at least, my namesake Peter Kropotkin, was a scientist...
and quite an accomplished one.... he had at least an occupation that
fit into the possibilities that were socially and officially accepted
by the society/state....... he wasn't a moocher....

so what of those who attempt to become something that isn't
officially sanctified by the state/society/church/media?

what do I tell them?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so given the above possibilities of being, having an officially sanction
possibilities to achieve, then what is freedom?

if we can only reach, become officially sanction possibilities of
being a policeman or an astronaut or a fireman, then where lies
the possibility of freedom?

if we can only be socially acceptable and officially sanctioned possibilities,
then we are not free and we are not engaged in the act of freedom.......

to be free means we can become those officially discouraged and hated
possibilities of becoming a anarchist or becoming Jesus or becoming
the possibility of Socrates or a Gandhi or a MLK......or even an Kropotkin....

freedom must include those possibilities as choices, possibilities
for us to become, to reach for without fear of punishment.........

is being, or becoming a Jesus or a Socrates available to us?
or perhaps a MLK or a Gandhi?

no, then we do not have freedom in America......

we are simply told what possibilities we can reach for and that
is that... no choice or freedom to become, is allowed outside of
those officially sanctioned possibilities allowed to the citizens
of America..........

we are not offered a chance to become a Socrates and thus we have
no freedom in America.....

Kropotkin