a new understanding of today, time and space.

[Peter Kropotkin]

and I must travel again.....

Kierkegaard once said "Life is not a problem to be solved,
but a reality to be experienced"

have we been going about this the wrong way.....

have we thought wrong about life, about it being a problem to be
solved instead of thinking about life being a reality to be experienced......

there are mysteries to be sure... how did life begin? what is the meaning of life?
what is the point of my existence? how shall life end? and the question that
reveals our egoism, "how does life go on without me, once I am dead?
life goes on quite nicely once you are dead..... just a FYI.....

Kierkegaard also once "What I really need to do is to get clear about,
what I am to do, not what I must know"

leaving unsaid, what was it that god wanted him to do?

He was after all a religious thinker who graduated from the University of
Copenhagen with a theology degree...

and those are two possibilities.... "what are we to know"
and "what are we to do" and we think that they are the only two
possibilities that exists... what to do and what to know.........

I say unto you... discover that we must unite those two possibilities...
what we must know and what we must do.....

we cannot do anything until we are clear about what we know......
for action without wisdom/thought is aimless....
and thought without actions is sterile.......

we must unite the two.. into where our values/thoughts give us
an understanding of what we are to do.. and what we do is informed
by what we know/understand......

given any situation... it is by my wisdom/thoughts that give me
the ability to engage with that situation..... in other words,
my values allows me to act in regards to any situation or event.....

my values of freedom for example, allow me to take actions that
are in line with my values.... so, I support the right to abortions
because my values are values of freedom..... abortion for me,
(and is important to note, for me) is about the right to choose,
the freedom to make our own choices...……

if I were to act without any values, then I cannot possibly know what actions
to take because the actions lack some guidance of values... we can only act
if we "know" what our values/understanding is.....I value freedom and so my every
action supports the cause of freedom... in conflicting goods, I use my values to
understand what actions I support... as I support freedom, my actions are to
increase freedom.... and thus in the ongoing conflict between competing goods,
I will pick the course of action that increases or is about freedom.....
thus in the conflicting goods that is security vs freedom, I will always be on
the side of freedom....so the actions I take are in support of freedom...
now what specific actions that might be depends upon the situation, the event
that requires actions.... different situations demand's different actions....
it is not a set world we live in.... it is a ever changing, moving, dynamic,
ongoing, events and situations we find ourselves in..... and no one set
action are going to work in a dynamic situation... we have to act within
an understanding that the world is changing and the situation is ever changing....

we cannot approach life or situations with a set, fixed already determined
course of action...… the situation/the event tells us what our possibilities are
and our values tells us what is also possible...…….

our values allow us to be able to understand what is our possibilities in
any given situation or event...….

we support or disapprove of actions or events based upon our values which
we believe in.... so we must have a union of both values and actions to
make any sense of the universe...….

it is not enough to know what to do, but it is also incumbent for us to
have values which make our actions make sense or to be of use...…

we must have a marriage of both values and actions.... it isn't enough to know
stuff and it isn't enough to know what to do..... we must unite the two....


Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we have many who are mono thinkers.... they think in terms
of the one.... that life is..... for the Buddha, life is about suffering,
that is mono thinking..... that life is about one thing....
or to think in terms of us having one such personal identity...
for example to think of ourselves in term of a sexual identity...
being gay or heterosexual... whereas we have a multitude of possibilities....
in regards to our sexuality...….

and we have a multitude of possibilities in regards to other areas of our life....

mono thinkers tend to think of human existence in terms of one or maybe
if they are wild, two possibilities..... and thus for them, they have no
ambiguity in their life...….

"do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large,
I contain multitudes" ……..

am I good? am I evil? who knows, in the morning, I am good and in the
afternoon, I am evil.... I encompass the human experience within my
soul and body....when a lost dog is found, I weep like a baby
and at times, at times, I could coldly deny money to a homeless person
and never give it a second thought.....

some might say that I have sin....no, no child, I haven't sinned, for in
reality, I have had lessons, lessons in what it takes to be human...
and those lessons aren't sins.... they are experiences in being human.....

I don't wish to identify myself in solely limited fashion as
a nationalist or an humanist or as a god fearing man, or
as a democrat or as a American..... I wish to rise above such
limiting notions as is given by these official designations that
are approved by people en masse....

what we need today is a gadfy… one who upsets the apple cart of
official America.... we are no longer an democracy.... and as
a gadfly, I must warn all of America that we are no longer an democracy....

for we are a corporatocracy... government of the corporations, for the corporations,
and by the corporations...… but heed no mind because you are in chains...

the chains of being in debt and the chains in your thinking that America is
what you were taught by schools, another corporate interest....
mono thinking cannot help you escape this...…

but Kropotkin.. Kropotkin, you are confused and lost.....
first you are babbling about mono thinkers and then about
possibilities... what in the world does this idea of corporatocracy have to do with
anything? you are off track..... in your mono thinking, yes, yes I am off track....
but in the world where every is tied up in everything else, where honesty and
morality and possibilities and corporate interest are all tied up.... you just have to
see the dots.... but Kropotkin.. I am confused, I can't see the dots, tell me where
they are.... so I can agree with you or disagree with you...…..

as if I need you to agree or disagree with me....if you can't see the dots,
I cannot waste my time guiding you to them......I have more important fish
to fry.... understanding the dots I see into some fashion....

but the dots are always changing and moving... their movement allows
ambiguity and different interpretations...… it is all the same...….
and it is all different.....

I do not claim to hold a monopoly on the truth.. I do not claim
to have exclusive rights to what is true and right.....

I can only say, from where I sit, from my viewpoint, this is true and right....
and you can equally say, nope, you are wrong... I see the truth... I see what is right.....

and I cannot present any evidence or facts to prove or disapprove what you said...

I can only say, for me, at this time, my evidence, my viewpoint says you are wrong.....

maybe tomorrow, I might even agree with you... but not today.....

it is all so vague and ambiguous... and right there, there is the best description
of life I have ever heard...vague and ambiguous...…..

it is nothing more, and nothing less.....

Kropotkin

[iambiguous]

I am going to try to answer your questions in a slightly different way today....

ambiguity: the quality of being open to more then one interpretation: inexactness,
synonyms: ambivalence, equivocation, more obscurity, uncertainty, puzzle,
doubtfulness, enigma.....

ambiguity is tied to possibilities and chance and randomness...
it is ambiguous because there are so many possibilities and
because it is so random and as chance plays a major role in our lives....

Yes, but there are clearly any number interactions out in the either/or world in which, for all practical purposes, ambiguity simply does not exist. For example, a scientific understanding of the laws of physics is necessary to send something into space able to orbit planet earth...or to explore the solar system and beyond. And this is the case for any nation embracing any moral and political system. God or No God, capitalist or socialist, democratic or authoritarian, liberal or conservative.

Instead, ambiguity, uncertainty and conflict pop up when the discussion shifts from physics to value judgments. Ought a nation to expend billions of dollars in space ventures when that money could go a long way towards dealing with many problems right here on earth?

That is the part I embed in my current understanding of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

I am a man born during the hunter-gatherer age, which lasted a million years
or so, depending upon whom you talk to....

what possibilities did I have during the hunter-gatherer stage of civilization?
not that many... I can hunt or I can gather (although realistically it was women
who gathered and men hunted) I could have been a priest/shaman, chief of the tribe,
warrior, a tool maker, the list I can make of possibilities of the hunter-gatherer isn't
really that large..... there are limited possibilities for the hunter-gatherer...
which means the possibilities are also limited... and limited possibilities means
limited ambiguity....chance and randomness still played a role, but frankly
there weren't a whole lot of possibilities for a human being during this time period...
thus there was a limited amount of ambiguity..

Yes, well put. Back then [historically] we find small, basically self-contained communities that interacted in the most rational --natural -- manner in order to sustain the community itself. A proper place for everyone and everyone in their proper place. Subsistence itself being at stake.

In other words, very little surplus labor. And certainly no philosophers around. All that stuff was attributed to the gods.

Where then was there room for ambiguity in regards to bringing home the bacon, providing shelter, reproducing the community and defending it?

On the other hand, we "moderns" have ample surplus labor, ample opportunities to go beyond basic needs, ample access it hundreds of different communities who embrace conflicting sets of value judgments, ample access to science in order to take "the gods" out of the picture.

And lots and lots of philosophers around able to take the actual fact of human interaction up into the clouds that become their "intellectual contraptions".

however with the increase of our possibilities comes an increase in
the ambiguity in our lives. Ambiguity is about the possibilities,
the possible interpretations that can exists within any given
situation/ possibility.....

Meaning there are considerable more choices available to us. But the either/or world doesn't go away when, in order to attain or to accomplish something, you must either choose this or that set of behaviors. Again, only when what you want comes into contact with what others want such that these sets of behaviors come to clash does the ambiguity, ambivalence, and uncertainty embedded in dasein, rival goods, and political power come into play.

But: the objectivists get around that by insisting that only their own chosen values/behaviors are to be rewarded, while those of others will be punished.

justice is just another ambiguity because justice has a number of
interpretations, a number of different possibilities...…

and when the possibility of justice collides with the possibility of
freedom, we have a collision of conflicting values, of conflicting
goods.....how do we decide between two conflicting values or
two conflicting goods?

as a liberal, I have made my two values being freedom and justice...
what happens when my two primary values collide?

Again, as a "general description" of the human condition, sure, that's reasonable. But it is no less reasonable to a conservative too. Only when this sort of abstraction confronts an actual clash between liberals and conservatives in an actual context do the ambiguities embedded in moral nihilism reconfigure into "one of us" vs. "one of them".

And all I can do is to insist that in order to demonstrate this we need to bring political ideals out into the world of actual conflicting goods in an actual set of circumstances that most of us are likely to be familiar with.

Here is your own example:

let us take another ongoing, current situation.....

we have those who favor security, the right and then
there are those who favor freedom...….

and we have those who favor security, wanting to limit
freedom, to watch everyone, a police state, where we
have no freedom to speak or to write or to think....
because those who demand security want to be completely
safe, they want to limit freedom or completely end freedom
in the name of safety.....

so they allow the state to moniter our mail, our e-mail, our
telephone conversations, our text messages and all in the name of
security, safety...…

but as a liberal, I want freedom, so I am more then willing to
be a little less safe and to have greater freedom...so, If I could,
I would end all state monitoring of all communications, no more
listening to our phone conversations, no more invasions of our
privacy in the name of security, safety...no more monitoring
our e-mails or our text messaging or our mail...………

I am far more in favor of freedom, which is a value,
then I am afraid which is security, another value....
I favor one value over another.....

And, indeed, the conservatives can come up with their own set of assumptions that [from their point of view] favor security over freedom. But it still has to be about a specific context. In other words, emphasizing security in regard to the "war on terror" is one thing, and another thing altogether in regard to the war against Hitler and the Nazis.

Just is in the cold war against the Communists, liberals and conservatives were both able to construct convincing arguments pro and con in regard to the freedom/security question.

Depending on how they construed Communism itself and the extent to which they feared an increasing Communist encroachment around the globe.

And then there are the arguments of those like me who suggest that the national security police state has more to do with the military industrial complex and sustaining a war economy for the sake of those able to profit off it.

but of course, IAM wants specific acts based upon specific grounds....

but I have my value/values of freedom.... and with that in mind,
I can decide best how to act when we have conflicting goods or values.....

where my choices are made blind.... and every choice is
full of ambiguity....full of possible interpretations.....
I cannot say with certainty that my "values" are better or
more meaningful then Wendy's values.... I simply can't know.....
I cannot assume or even think that my values have more
meaning or are better then Wendy's.....

they are simply my values, made in the midst of millions
of possible values... why? I have no justification for the values
I have chosen.....the choice of those values are as random
and chaotic as any choice of values we might make....[/

What I want is for you to note your argument in regard to how your "I" here is not just an existential contraption rooted in dasein.

In other words, recognizing that had your life and your experiences been very different, you might well be here defending Wendy's point of view about Trump. Instead, like her, you seem intent on reacting to him and his policies under the assumption that your frame of mind reflects the most rational and virtuous manner in which to react to him and his policies.

For the objectivist [in my view], it's the certainty itself that must prevail. As, in other words, a psychological defense mechanism. Rather than in whatever it is that one claims to be certain about. Thus, for the objectivist, the is/ought world becomes just another manifestaion of the either/or world. Why? Because, for the objectivist, there is a "real me" able to be wholly in sync with "the right thing to do".

Now, I'm not arguing that my own "real me" is in touch here with "the right way to think" about these things. I clearly recognize that my argument is no less an existential contraption subject to change given a new set of experiences, relationships and access to ideas.

You, yourself, of late, are quick to acknowledge that you too may well be wrong about your reaction to things like Trump and his policies. But, in my own opinion, that is not how your posts inflect when it comes down to actually reacting to him or something that he does. IQ45 says it all. From my frame of mind, that's got political objectivism written all over it.

all I can do is stand here and say, I have these values...
they are conditional values which represent me at this time....

as I have noted before, I have changed my values more then once...
both politically and philosophically....so a battle over values earlier
in my life would have me picking different values because I held different
values...…

Here then I can only explore the manner in which you construe "I" such that you are only more or less "fractured and fragmented", and down in the "hole" that I am in:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values "I" can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction...or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then "I" begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

The closest you seem able to get to that appears to be this:

the battle between conflicting goods/values is a temporary conflict...
because the values are temporary....today, I will fight the good fight
for freedom and justice... tomorrow, I might renounce those values
and turn to the dark side (but even saying the dark side is a relative one
you have to compare and contrast viewpoints and values to even understand
them, little less condemn them)

From the perspective of the moral nihilist, "the good fight" and "the dark side" are seen as no less existential contraptions rooted in dasein. And, in a No God world, any and all behaviors can be rationalized. From the purely selfish motives of the sociopath to the death camp exterminations of a fascist regime.

"In the absence of God all things are permitted."

You either get that or you don't. But it can only be gotten [from my frame of mind] as an existential contraption. Making "I" just all that much more problematic. And not just philosophically. But for all practical purposes as well.

[Peter Kropotkin]

in the absence of god, all things are permitted.....

and I would venture a guess the existence of god hasn't actually prevented
much of anything.....even with the presence of god, popes still fucked
and still waged war and still broke the ten commandments...…

most people seem to assume the presence of god, somehow changed people
into "god-fearing behavior" and yet, the history books tell us otherwise.......

the presence of god hasn't seem to change people behavior, one way or the other.....

and that was the self appointed task of Nietzsche, to find some basis for
morality without any recourse to god......hence he tried the ubermensch,
as Nietzsche was a snob, he didn't care all that much about the "masses",
the higher man, he was all about that.....

the reality is, a psychopath like IQ45 doesn't care about anything other then
his own demented self....he doesn't care if he does good or bad, it just doesn't
matter to him....all that matter is his ego and the strokes he can get for his ego....

what the hell does that have to do with god?

nothing, absolutely nothing.......

for most people, god doesn't even exists within an behavior equation....

he is just a word that means nothing and has nothing to do with most people....

even with the existence of god, people still killed and people still steal
and people slept people other then their wives or husband and have done so
since the beginning of time....and that "bad" behavior
certainly hasn't change in the last million years.. with or without god.....

people will find their own rationalization for doing whatever the hell they want to do,
regardless of their being a god or not...….

just read a history book, any one will do, why hell, read the bible,
people kill and have sex and steal and it don't mean a dam thing....
and why?

because we are temporary creatures... our individual actions are
nothing more then just farting in the wind and last about as long....

until we get human behavior attached to something, something
that has consequences for our behavior, we won't even begin to
become human....we are still human/animal... and until we
lose the animal part of us, we are going to spin our wheels in
the ground and get nowhere...…

there are no consequences for disobeying god... heaven, hell,
they mean nothing and they are nothing...…

we must attach human actions to something real to get
people to become aware of what they can become...…

or to say another way, we must become weighed down with
something that forces us to act "responsibly"...…..
and I think the answer lies in history... past, present and the future....
we must become aware of, mindful of who we are and how we must act...…

and being weighted down by the future is one such possibility....
every act you make influences and changes the future.....
those idiots who are burning down the amazon forest don't realizes
that they have doomed their country to desolation.. they only see
what could be built in the amazon to make some money... the worst idea
ever.... to destroy a natural resource that can't be replaced for some
transitory, temporary wealth that will be gone in a few years.....

history won't be kind to those morons and it is in the eyes of history
we must act.....what kind of planet or civilization or state,
do we wish to leave to history?

is civilization really about putting condo's in the amazon?
really...…. really?

we, the planet and us, share a common fate... we cannot live without
the planet and the planet cannot survive us acting for the betterment
of mankind.... because what is beneficial for us humans is damaging
to the earth.... at some point, we are going to have to put the earth first
or die... the choice will be as simple as that.....

and that is how choices is made without god... note,
I haven't mentioned god in the last few paragraphs and why?
because it wasn't necessary..... we can easily exists without god...

if there is no god, life goes on as is...…that is why
there aren't any changes.... we behave as we always have done...
badly and foolishly and destructively.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

I am a fighter and for that I make no apologies...
I have fought all my life, but my battle have been
mostly about me...I spend years fighting my disability...
I have spent years fighting to understand my place in the universe....
I have fought against bosses and managers and owners
and supervisors over the years.....I think my natural reset
is to do battle with someone or some idea.... must be the
Irish in me.... always willing to do battle, fight even if the
odds are against me.. in fact, the greater the odds against me,
the better.. I would rather fight god, the universe, the entire
world rather then spend time in some small, petty fight over
something stupid..... the greater the stakes, the more fight I have.....

I have never seen this as a fault or a sin or as a weakness...

it is in fact part of my strength as a human being....
and I relish a good battle over idea's and thoughts
and being... a physical fight? naw, that is just a waste of time....

I doubt regardless of the time period, I would be happy
and calm... I am always seeking out some new battle to be fought....

even at my advance age........ I will never be part of the crowd
or go with the flow or be at one with society/state/the universe....

I am simply not able to find peace in some mundane and superficial
manner like others..... I must be difficult even when it
makes my life very difficult... I must fight the crowd and
oppose the will of the people because it isn't my will...

I listen to new age music and soft piano music all the time...
probably to sooth the savage beast that resides inside of me....

I must fight against our self deceptions and fight against
our denial of who we are and what we are...……

I see and that vision is quite clear to me.....
I see where society must head and how that vision doesn't
include me.. for I will never fit in, regardless of the vision....

occasionally, I feel like Moses, searching for the promised land,
knowing I will die before I reach it.. having it just out of my reach,
within sight, close enough to walk to.. but I am too weak to reach it...

and my last words will be cursing my legs for not carrying me any further.....
I will fight and struggle and oppose my fate.....

I will end my life as I have lived it.... being difficult as hell, doing
battle with whomever stands in my way...…….

I have found most battle aren't worth it, most battles are a waste of time,
but fighting death and fighting the universe and fighting god..
those are good battles to fight.. large, unbeatable opponents who
have always won..... I will lose but I will go down fighting to the end.....

take me if you can.... take me if you can....

and this is how one's uses the Goethe method to salvation...


Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

I began this search of mine, years ago...

my attempt was to bring philosophy back to the people...
and look at what I have so far accomplished.....

nothing.....in attempting to unite philosophy with life, I
have failed in both.....I have ambiguity and despair
and humans being isolated from who they are and
I haven't found wisdom or knowledge or understanding.....
or even the means to gain wisdom or knoweldge or understanding.....

it isn't enought to take apart or destroy, one must build, be creative,
have a vision and then work like hell to achieve that vision.......

my rational mind has declared my entire experiment a failure,
of colossal failure of epic proportions..........

and yet my spirit... my ever fighting spirit has simply decided that
this is a minor setback........ I cannot achieve some sort of grand
reunification of philosophy, no, that ship has sailed....

we can't have some overarching system like Hegel or Kant...
that much is clear... the will to a system is the path to failure......

so, we must break it down..... use the pieces of philosophy to
engage in our lives..... we ask ourselves questions and we
see the small possible answers.....

we get a whole lot of life answers....
we must search for happiness, or seek god,
or become wise or become who you are or
avoid suffering, seek pleasure but not to much,
avoid pain, get rich, seek titles, buy things, greed is good,
seek knowledge or facts, fame and fortune, be someone...
but I ask, who should I be?

kinda like chocolate, this week's advice about chocolate being good or bad
depends upon a coin toss apparently.... such is the way of our life choices....
and the above list is by no means complete....

what does this long list tell you? that we in fact, have
no idea whatsoever what it means to be human or to find
what it means to be human....

after a million years of our being human, we still don't know
what the goal of being human is....we still don't know what it means
to be human.....if we have so many possibilities, then perhaps, that
means we are simply guessing as to what it means to be human?

I mean, how different does a goal to be happy is from a goal
of seeking wisdom or a goal of fame or fortune?

they have nothing in common....that there are so many different
possibilities, so many different paths should be of question?

why, why are they so many different possibilities, so many different
and diverse paths, so many different goals to be human?

what does it mean to be human?

that is the question?

and what is the answer?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

who we pray to, tell us who we are...
if we Americans pray to Mammon, as we do,
then that tells the world who we are...
we care more about wealth then we do about anything else...

I go on facebook and quite often, I will get one of the those annoying
post about if one repost a particular post, god will give one a vast
amount of wealth.. and at the end of the post always ends with an amen....

somehow making god about the money, instead of the spirit....or
the religious...

now if we were to pray to god, god isn't physical nor is he material,
not alive as we know it.....because if he was, where is he? that has
always been the problem, the location of god... so to get around these
particular issues, god has been presented as being spirit.... so if we pray to god,
then where are we directing these prayers? now many say, god is inside of us....
so we are praying to ourselves? ok, may has well pray to myself if I am praying to
something inside of me... prayer directed to my liver or my stomach or my heart.....
no, that strikes as being silly, so prayer really needs to be directed outward,
away from us....outside of us....


as we have noted, we possess many different facts, for example,
that NY has 8 million people or that the earth is 93 million miles from
earth... but facts, knowledge is changeable... the knowledge we possess
about facts changes..... for example, I grew up believing that we had
nine planets, with Pluto being the smallest, furthest planet from us...
suddenly, Pluto lost its status of being a planet, a fact, changed....
Pluto still exists out there, but because of changing considerations,
we no longer call Pluto a planet... a fact changes.....

we go to school to learn facts like this.... the Declaration of Independence
was signed in 1776 and the French Revolution was from 1789 to roughly 1799...
give or take...…… we have plenty of facts that are changeable... we might,
given changing considerations, decide that the French Revolution ended in 1794
or began in 1788...…

but more importantly, how does knowing the year of the Declaration of Independence
was signed, make me a better person? How does know that year, help me become
who I am?

we assign a high priority to facts, knowledge and yet, those facts
might change and might not even be all that important...
so many facts are simply not worth knowing... unless one is
a specialist in some area where that fact is important.....
that the Greek city of Croton was located in southern Italy...
ok, now your life is complete...….

but how, how would that fact help you become a better person,
or even understand what being a better person even meant.....

we are consumed by little facts, that dominate our days,
my wife is obsessed with our getting our employee discount when
we shop at our store...she spends hours calling these poor people when
it is clear we are already getting the discounts, but does a wife ever
believe a husband? nope... she waste so much time dealing with
something that is pretty dam unimportant.... and that is the problem
with most people, that they are consumed with little details that
are really unimportant.. I have customers go ballistic if they don't
get their 12 cent discount on cheese... really, how is that going to
help one become a better person or even understand what it means
to be a better person? Our focus is on the wrong stuff, we focus
on unimportant matters while ignoring what it means to be human
or how do we become who we are or to use our energy to know thyself....

or perhaps even to use our energy to understand such questions
as what does it mean an individual within society and what is the
relationship between an individual and society?

all these very important questions demanding to be answered
and yet people are dicking around with getting some bogus
discount on cheese as if that crap really matters...….

that crap takes our eyes off of the important matters that should engage
us, knowing ourselves, a reevaluation of values, of becoming who we are.....

or perhaps a religious person can engage in the question, of which law to
obey, man's law or god's law? for man's law has all kinds of workarounds
for the various laws of god...…

god says, thou shall not kill....

and man says, thou shall not kill..... but you can kill if you are a policeman
defending oneself or if you are solider killing in the name of your country
or if you are temporally insane and then "hay, its all good you had an excuse"..

so, which law do you obey? man's law or god's law?

that is why there are no such thing as being Christian in our modern age....
we all have accepted man's law over god's law...……..

but does anyone actually think about this or do they think about
their own ambition or their wealth or the titles they can achieve....

no, we are adrift because we have lost sight of what is truly important
in our lives..... we have lost what it means to be in the human condition..
and we have lost the idea of the human condition to such petty
and irrelevant thoughts as to making sure we get that 12 cent discount
on the cheese....or which restaurant we are going to tonight?

we use our day to day living to mask or hide or deny the important questions
of human existence....

it isn't about facts or knowledge but about understanding what it takes
to become human, fully human... not a human/animal which is what
most people are...…...

I oppose modern society because it encourages one to deny or hide or
just not think about, what it means to be human and what is
the real goal of being human..... is fighting about a 12 cent discount
really the path to understanding what it means to be human?

past, present and future.... all questions must engage in
the past, present and future...
we humans in the past were.... and we humans today are...
and tomorrow, what will we humans be?

quite often as I write, I am reminded of the movie, 1776..
when Adams sings a little song... and the words go like this:

is anybody there? does anybody care?

I wonder......

Kropotkin

[Meno_]

"we use our day to day living to mask or hide or deny the important questions
of human existence"


Can we overcome the denial of our inner self, that causes us to deny the values which we repress in the process of living?

Or, is such denial absolutely excluded from our self conscious star of mind, resulting in an unbearable and equally absolute negative reaction.?....


The present social reality reveals both of these enigmatic queries. It is obvious.

[Peter Kropotkin]

somehow and in some fashion, I feel I must comment upon
IAM.. I am not oppose or even object to his "way of thinking"
in fact, I applaud him... for even trying which is more then I can
say about 99.9 % of the human race... what is at issue here is
that his problem is his problem... it is not my question...
that is not to say he is wrong or right, it is simply not
my question of existence....I try to understand his frame of
reference and because it is not my question, I have a hard time
understanding his viewpoint... I just don't see why his question
means so much to him.. that isn't to say, he just should give up
or that he is wrong, no, a thousand times no....

I have a hard time with his viewpoint because it isn't my viewpoint....
and I am sure he has a hard time understanding my viewpoint because
it isn't his viewpoint...….it has nothing to do with being right or wrong,
or being dumb or being smart or anything..... I stand upon my rock
and I can see this and this and this... and he stands upon his rock
and he sees this and this and this... we just don't see the same thing
because we stand upon different rocks.. different viewpoints.....

I want him to continue on his journey of understanding.. of what
it means to be human.. of discovery to be human....

and I want him to continue to post even if I don't quite understand
his viewpoint..... for it isn't about me...but it is about IAM and his
journey to become who he is.....

Goethe once said... If I love you, what business is it of yours?

and we can say the same thing about our quest to become human...

if we seek knowledge or wisdom or understanding, what business is it of yours?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

"we use our day to day living to mask or hide or deny the important questions
of human existence"


Can we overcome the denial of our inner self, that causes us to deny the values which we repress in the process of living?

Or, is such denial absolutely excluded from our self conscious star of mind, resulting in an unbearable and equally absolute negative reaction.?....


The present social reality reveals both of these enigmatic queries. It is obvious.

K: very nice post....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

one might, might be able to reduce philosophy to
two different viewpoints...

when ask a question, a person might say one of two things
and that shows us where that person is....

when offer a question, a person might ask, is that true?
and another might ask, what is its meaning?

and right here we have the entire history of philosophy....

one might ask, it is true?
and another might ask, what does it mean?

when offer a question/statement, do you ask if it is true or do you
ask, what does it mean?

Plato asked, is it true?
Nietzsche asked, what does it mean?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

or said another way:

the search of for knowledge is the search for the "truth"
and the search for wisdom is the search for the "meaning"

does the search for one or the other, preclude the other?

no, for we seek some sort of synthesis of the two..
we seek that knowledge and wisdom become one.......

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so we have sentences like, "the earth is 93 million miles from earth"
and we have two ways to approach this sentence...

one way is to ask, is this true? is the earth 93 million miles from the sun?

and other way is to ask, "what does it mean that the earth is 93 million
miles from the sun"?

the question is asked.....

man is a mean, ego driven, directionless, rat-bastard....

so, we can ask ourselves one of two questions,

is this true?

or

what does this mean?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

one might wonder, when the modern world began with a "scientific" viewpoint,
did that remove or kick out the earlier question of the pre-scientific
viewpoint which ask, what does it mean?

in other words, our "modern" viewpoint ask, is it true?
when the earlier viewpoint, pre-modern viewpoint ask,
"what does it mean?"

perhaps we have lost a key and vital question in becoming
"scientific"... we have lost the question of meaning.....

so, when presented with an opposing viewpoint, instead of asking,
is it true? ask yourself, what does it mean?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

the "crisis" of our modern age comes because we ask, is it true?
instead of asking, what does it mean?

changing the question from the truth to meaning, makes
all the difference in the world.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

asking oneself, what is to be done?
is to ask, what is the truth?

it is not asking, what is its meaning, but what's its truth......

so, Marx wasn't asking about the meaning of his quest, but
what is the truth of his quest.......

so, dialectical materialism is a question of finding the truth,
it is not a question of finding its meaning.....

capitalism is a question of finding the truth, money
and not about its meaning.....

democracy is about finding the truth,
not about its meaning.....

religion is about finding the truth,
not about finding its meaning.......

thus the ism's and ideologies of modern man
is about finding truths, and not about finding
the meaning.....

and thus we have failed......

Kropotkin

[Meno_]

"the search of for knowledge is the search for the "truth"
and the search for wisdom is the search for the "meaning"

does the search for one or the other, preclude the other?

no, for we seek some sort of synthesis of the two..
we seek that knowledge and wisdom become one......."

Kropotkin



Exactly, what happened was a separation of truth from meaning, and trying to put them together in a humpty dumpty kind of way is not an easy or even an absolutely adorable task.

[Peter Kropotkin]

now, the modern pursuit of meaning, they why... has flounder
upon the question/statement that is this,

"how can we have meaning, purpose when the universe is random,
chaotic, full of chance?

how do we find meaning, the why, given that the universe has
no purpose? the call of those ism's and ideologies which give meaning
and purpose have all been destroyed....

who believes in religion anymore? certainly not Christians...
and who believes in god? no one is a "true" believer anymore.....

and the meaning of such ism's and ideologies like capitalism
and communism is destroyed when the individual human being
is subsumed, devalued, negated within the ism of communism
and capitalism and Catholicism...……

there is no meaning in such nihilism.....

so, how do we discover meaning, purpose in a meaningless,
purposeless universe?

and not to be boring, but that was Nietzsche mission, to create
meaning, when it was clear to him, god was dead... I.E, that
ism's and ideologies of all sorts were dead.. we have killed them.....
in our pursuit of the "truth"...…


meaning/purpose cannot survive if, if its only means of justification
is found in the "truth"....

"why" isn't a question of truth or falsity

it is a question of meaning....and what is meaning when it is forced
to answer the wrong question, is it true?

and it is forced to justify its existence based on whether it is true or not.....

why.... that isn't about the truth and that is why we have so hard of a time
understanding why...….

because we continuously ask ourselves, is it true? and the question why isn't
about the truth.. and so we are mislead, sent astray, render ourselves false....
because we seek the truth, instead of seeking why.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

"the search of for knowledge is the search for the "truth"
and the search for wisdom is the search for the "meaning"

does the search for one or the other, preclude the other?

no, for we seek some sort of synthesis of the two..
we seek that knowledge and wisdom become one......."

Kropotkin



M: Exactly, what happened was a separation of truth from meaning, and trying to put them together in a humpty dumpty kind of way is not an easy or even an absolutely adorable task.

K: to unite the two, knowledge and meaning requires us to do something we haven't
done in a long time, be honest, reject denial, oppose self delusion......

we must work to unite knowledge and meaning, and that takes hard work...
our age is fundementally opposed to hard work... it wants easy answers,
it wants truth... you don't have to work very hard to find the truth...
but you have to work to find meaning.......

god forbid we actually dump our self delusions and self denials to
discover what our meaning is.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we try to replace meaning with "truths" like wealth, power,
fame and fortune and titles.....we admire those who
did or have achieved wealth, fame, fortune, power and titles

but recall those who achieved those "truths" like Paul allen
and Steve Jobs and Rockerfeller.... they are dead...
and what exactly were they able to take with them into death?


so, we engage in a false search for the truth with some
substitute like wealth and fame and power and titles....


we don't search for meaning in our lives, we substitute
"meaning" for the "truth" of materialism and capitalism
and communism and catholocism........


Kropotkin

[Meno_]

Yes and more. Because we could do all those things, we could be more honest and less jealous and full of greed, but resist them, we should do and stand by truth, even if we get side tracked by the meaning of falsely advertised values, we are reduced, as human beings, existentially toward less truthful ways, more dishonest and confusing, we actually cause to effect and affect others into false and less meaningless values.
We are split as to what we should do from what we are doing, and consequently start adopting less human attributes, and we become existentially hollow and start to play games based on dishonesty and self service, rather then in accordance to the benefit of others, even to those to whom we are closely related.

[Peter Kropotkin]

Yes and more. Because we could do all those things, we could be more honest and less jealous and full of greed, but resist them, we should do and stand by truth, even if we get side tracked by the meaning of falsely advertised values, we are reduced, as human beings, existentially toward less truthful ways, more dishonest and confusing, we actually cause to effect and affect others into false and less meaningless values.
We are split as to what we should do from what we are doing, and consequently start adopting less human attributes, and we become existentially hollow and start to play games based on dishonesty and self service, rather then in accordance to the benefit of others, even to those to whom we are closely related.

K: excellent, but now comes the 64,000 dollar question.....

what comes next? do you become "philosophical" and act and engage
in philosophy as it presents itself to you or do you act as if all this is
in the abstract and has nothing to do with how you act?

what are the real life consequence of your beliefs?

for if you have a theory but fail to act upon it, what is the point
of the theory?

engage in your life by practicing what you have preached.....

for theory without actions is barren and actions without theory
mindless... we must have both for us to be successful...
both theory and actions.....

so we have the theory, now what is the actions of your theory?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

this question of existence...…

is the question of existence a fact? is it a truth?

or, or is the question of existence about meaning?

science looks at existence and wonders about its truths, the facts,
religion looks at existence and wonders about it meaning, why?

who is right?

Kropotkin

[Meno_]

Right! And this is where iambig stands at the moment, as well. I think.
What we have between theory and application is what meaning is, and meaning is where truth is to be found if looked at sufficiently.

Every body nowedays keeps asking what do you mean by this and that, and Every body gets jumbled up in figuring out First of all whether the person asking is on the level.

It gets tricky because from the get go, every person involved in trying to figure this, presumes a certain degree of dishonesty. He is ok if he is a bit of a bullshitter. otherwise levels of.meaning are off to a rough start, and most people don't really care that much, they have many other things to think about.

So the beginning is patchy to begin with.

If a philosopher is talking , it's the same thing
Then the meaning of that kind of corresponding tit for tat, consists simply of the bottom line, hey why bother, every body is a philosopher, and every body has theories, some more earthy.
Talking to taxi drivers back in the old country can convey more meaningful truth, then spending time in an old world dusty library.
Can spend a lot of time just talking about what really philosophy is, and why it is a dying art, the only value to it is commentary on new developments, who have gone out of the realm of 'philosophical discussion.

Relevance? I disagree but that too would be beyond a focus of.connection. connecting abstract clouds of hey day old school formal expectations naawd on old time physics of.the Newtonian sort with the abstractly expressed meaning of futurism.
But it is doable and particularly in the area of singular, metaphysically involved intuitionism, including the age old study into hermetic philosophy.Nietzche was.on the right track with affective-reductive newly found phenomenological descriptions
Into mythology and through the study of.meaning, but I do not think he would be comfortable with extreme nominal-positive focus on meaning in it's self.
The idea is connective-relative symbolism, which would most aptly by interpreted as a.shift.toward art, for it's own sake, in order to clarify the relationships , as they know st and at a.very critical time.
What intention did the early nuances have to follow one line of.argument rather toward the other?
The necessity of exclusionary logic has apparently has been cemented over , by it's otherworldly implicative inductiveness, and shut off connection. to the real necessity of upholding descent human standards of existence.

At the moment, insight of the philosophical sort Can only be gleaned through hermetic philosophical insights.

[Meno_]

this question of existence...…

is the question of existence a fact? is it a truth?

or, or is the question of existence about meaning?

science looks at existence and wonders about its truths, the facts,
religion looks at existence and wonders about it meaning, why?

who is right?

Kropotkin

I think both must be right, but weighed in at different levels of existence. Denial is not one of them .



"Is this question of existence...…

is the question of existence a fact? is it a truth?

or, or is the question of existence about meaning? "


The old Descartes' duality rearing its ugly evil genius head.

Facts SHOULD be meaningful, !