a new understanding of today, time and space.

[Peter Kropotkin]

theologians and scientist and philosophers are always
looking to find some overall, theme or some complete
unified theory of everything.... they search far and wide
for some means to have a unified theory of everything...
see Einstein for examples....

but what needs to be unified isn't some outside theory,
some theory outside of us... what needs to be unified
is that which is within in us.....

to answer the question of the human condition is to
answer by unifying the different aspects within us....

or said another way, to unify the heart and mind...
not by one controlling the other, but
by understanding, by allowing the heart to lead when
it is necessary for the heart to lead and when it
is necessary for the mind to lead, we allow it....

this requires some judgement, this requires for us
to have the wisdom to know when it is time
to think and when it is time to feel and when to
act upon the right thought or feeling at the right time....

the art of wisdom is to know when it is time to
act upon our brain or when it is time to act upon our heart.....

that is one of the main examples of wisdom...

when do we think and act upon that rationalism
and we do we feel and act upon that irrationalism...

and over the course of our lives, sometimes it is necessary
to act upon our thoughts and sometimes it is necessary
to act upon our irrationalism.....

sometimes it is not just a week to week thing, but
sometimes it is an minute to minute thing...…

at some moments we must act rational
and at some moments we must act irrationally....
within minutes of each other....

do we have the "wisdom" to know when it is time
to act rational and the "wisdom" to know when
it is time to act irrationally?

both have their place, at the right moments....

but how do we identify which moment requires us to
be rational and how do we know when to be irrational?

experience and wisdom... which might be the same thing.....

experience may be said to be the irrational and wisdom may
be said to be the rational....

we use both in combination to discover what is required at
what time in our lives....

so, part of the human condition is to understand
the role of rationalism and irrationalism is in our lives
and to act upon that knowledge...…

the human condition is, in part, the rational and the irrational …..

and we must learn to use both, or one or the other, when appropriate...


Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we see within philosophy proper, this battle
between rationalism and irrationalism.....

we can count as the rationalistic philosophers
as Descartes and Spinoza and Leibniz and Kant
and Hegel and even Marx....

and we can run that into the 20th century...
with Popper and the logical positive and analytical
thinkers and the mathematical philosophers like Russell
and Whitehead and Cassirer and Wittgenstein....

but we have had a counter philosophy which is what existentialism
is....think of an equation where both sides must be equal....
and existentialism is an attempt to make both sides equal....
the head and the heart.....

so we have such philosophers as Kierkegaard, Sartre, Nietzsche
and even Dostoevsky...who place the heart with equal level
as the head and some, some even put the heart above the head,
Kierkegaard for example.....

these philosophers attempt to equal the equation, to
make the equation in human beings of head and heart, equal....

as for me, I am a child of the existentialists....
and yet, and yet, I believe in rationalism...

so my battle is to find some commonality between these
two opposing, but not opposing aspects of life...

how do I find some means of keeping my personal equation
between, rationalism and irrationalism, balanced?

when I find that answer... and the search has taken me a lifetime..
I will be able to enter the next phase of my personal journey to wisdom.....


Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so we have philosophers of the 20th century describe
the human experience as ambiguous and absurd or
authentic or inauthentic along with confusion and angst
and dread...…..we see in these words, the effort to
balance the books.... to keep the equation in philosophy,
equal.... and we must do the same.....

it is one sided to hold for the heart or to hold for the head,
we must find an equation that answers for both.....

that answer lies however within each of us.....

if we begin with the heart, we must balance the books
by giving equal existence to matters of the head
and if we begin with the head, we must balance the books
with equality to the heart.....

and once again, we find ourselves with Socrates.. in beginning
we must first begin by knowing ourselves.... that is first of all,
discover if we are beings of the heart or the head.....
so in addition to beginning the personal journey to becoming
ourselves by learning what those values are that were
indoctrinated into us as children, we must also learn
see ourselves as children of the heart or the head.....

it is a more complicate matter to become human, fully human
then to simply grow old.....

to become human requires patience and time and wisdom
and understanding and the willingness to challenge our
inherited notions of who we are and what is possible for us....

for the point of being human is to explore what is possible
for us and part of those possibilities is found within the
understanding of the complexities of being human...

to understand the highest aspirations of being human as
being only a scientist like Einstein or Newton is to miss
what it means to be human... but to understand
what it means to be human as a poet is to also miss
the possibilities within us....for it is possible
for us to unite the two aspects of being human within us....

Goethe for example is one such example of this uniting of the
two possible aspects of who we are......the scientific and the
artistic.... the heart and the head...….

the battle out there is nothing compared to the battle within us
to create, to discover what it takes to unite the two sides,
the head and the heart, within us.....

the battle to be human is the battle to create an equation within us
that unites the head and the heart.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

it has been suggested that the point of, the meaning of life is
to find happiness or to discover knowledge or to seek beauty....or
as the Buddhist might say, to avoid suffering.... to seek enlightenment....
as the point of, the meaning of life.......

but such single purpose seeking seems to avoid the equation part of life...
as life is nothing more then an equation....head = heart....
E = Mc2....we see that in thinking of life as an equation allows us
to see that we must unite, understand life as an equation between
the head and the heart....

the battle between being human is not a battle between science
and religion but a uniting between the two... making the two separate
and distinct issues as one...…


mono thinking such as life is a search for happiness or that
life is a search for enlightenment or that life is an search
for material goods is simple a search for failure because
we cannot, cannot understand life as a seeking of one, single
solitary issue...… life is about combining multiple issues into
an equation...… good and evil, right and wrong, up and down seem
to be single, divided issues but in fact, they are not only two sides
of the same coin, but they are the same thing.....

it is easier to us to think about such matters in terms of
single approaches but that would make the issues, mono issues...
good is not good without evil and evil requires good to make sense....
you must have one to make sense of the other...…

the question of existence, the human condition is not about mono issues,
like good or evil or right or wrong, the head or the heart....
but some understanding of what the head means to the heart
and what good means to evil or what right means to wrong.....

we are creatures that can create poetry and science and technology
and mathematics and art and chairs and TV's and cars and
find the time to populate concentration camps and
kill millions because they don't hold the same beliefs as we do.....

so, who are the "real" human beings?

all of us, poets and scientist and prison guards and musicians
and serial killers...for each of those words, represents a possibility
of being human....

so what possibilities are you trying to reach and why?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so we can see from all of the above is that
as we are now in a romantic, heart, irrational
time.... we will inevitable turn to rationalism,
to the head and return to the equation....
the equation must, must remain equal...
and if our time is irrational,
then we must return to rationalism to balance
the equation....so, at some point in the future,
time unknown, we will return to balance
and return to rationalism...…

every age is a battle between rationalism and irrationalism.....

the french revolution began with rationalism
and ended with irrationalism......
as did the russia revolution...
as will our current age.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

do I offer a new vision of man?

do I offer a new Weltanschauung of who we are?

or is the new boss the same as the old boss?

do I offer a new vision?

yes, I believe so because after the last 200
year of nihilism, I offer up something beside nihilism....

the way to overcome nihilism is through an reevaluation of values
that we have.....our current values are thoroughly nihilistic because
they are values which dehumanizes and devalues human beings and their
values....

capitalism and communism and Catholicism are all nihilistic values
because they deny and devalue human values...

enter those truths and abandoned all hope of being saved....

the path through redemption lies with the undertaking of values,
not ism's or ideologies...… find your truth in values....

accept love as your value or accept justice or freedom
as your value/values... just don't try to find the "truth"
in ism's and ideologies... the 'truth" doesn't exist there.....

just as evolution has changed all of life but in small and
barely noticeable changes in traits... we can change the world,
not through big and noisy, dramatic changes... we can simple change
the world by each of us engaging in our overcoming... our engagement
with discovering who we are and then reevaluating our values.. rejecting
those values which we were indoctrinated with and then replacing, if necessary,
with value that are actually values we really hold....

as a an American, I was indoctrinated with certain values such as
in how America is the greatest country on earth and
how capitalism is the greatest invention since sliced bread
and the martial values of war which has been the staple of this
country since its inception......
and the virtue of representative democracy... which isn't representative
and it isn't democracy.....

my growth as a human being came from my being able to overcome my
childhood indoctrinations and coming to my own values and my own
understanding of who I am... my own world view is
supported by this overcoming...…...

I am something new... I am not who I was yesterday because I hold
new thoughts and new values and that allows me to have, to hold
a different Weltenschauung then I did yesterday....

my vision of man is one where we no longer seek out and praise
nihilistic values like the value of becoming who we are by the
purchase of material goods or with the worthless value of money/profits.....

a rejection of modern values but not a return to ancient values such
as offered by the Romans or the Greeks.....

we must find new values to match our new situation...
values must evolve to adapt to the everchanging conditions
we find ourselves in....

we no longer need to use fixed values that has been already santified
by the past.... they were great values for that time and place and
those conditions... but we live in a new era and a new time with
new conditions on the ground....

what is the old saying? adapt or die.....
yep......

the path into the future lies with the rejection of the old values..
even if they SEEM to hold the answers we seek, because we are not
living in those times, we cannot use those answers to solve our new,
modern questions....what it means to be human cannot be answered
with the answers provided by the Greeks or the Romans or the Chinese...
they can certainly be a starting point of what we seek but a starting point
only......I cannot see myself as the ancient Greeks did or as an ancient Roman
did or as someone in the middle ages because my questions are different
then their questions and thus my answers are going to be different....

the questions of modernity isn't to be solved with ancient answers written
in ancient books with ancient idea's.....

to be an "modern" man means we cannot answer our questions with
limited viewpoints of what it means to be human... in other words,
we cannot proclaim ourselves as democrats or homosexual or nationalist
and think that is some answer to the question of modernity....

those viewpoints only offer us a narrow and limited viewpoint of what
it means to be human..... we must, must broaden our understand of what
it means to be human by searching the whole broad spectrum of possibilities
instead of clinging to one or two small possibilities like being a nationalist
or being a Christian or being a homosexual as being the only answer to
the question, who are you?

nor is the answer found in such mono thinking as in thinking the
point of life is to escape suffering by becoming enlighten....
no, we are not so limited as to be defined by just suffering...
or by being defined by greed or by being defined by just hate.....

the human possibilities are wide, very, very wide and we
must include all those possibilities into what it means to be human....

to intentionally explore our possibilities is one understanding of
what it means to be human..... am I Christian? I can only know that
by exploring that possibility... am I a philosopher? I can only know
that by exploring that possibility....am I a homosexual? that possibility
has never appealed to me, it doesn't turn me on, as it were...
so, I don't need to explore that possibility....
but it might appealed to you and that is your right to explore as you wish...
and how can I deny that to you which I don't deny to myself.....

I leave open the future possibilities of becoming a conservative, of
becoming homosexual, of becoming Christian.. possibilities that as of today,
I deny, but I can't say with absolute certainty that I might continue to reject in
the future.....those possibilities exists...…

who are we? that is found in exploring our possibilities of being human....

Kropotkin

[promethean75]

the ilp stream of kropotkin consciousness thread.

you know what you have to do, pete. you can't continue avoiding it forever.

podcast.

[Peter Kropotkin]

after several days of work trying to kill me, I survived...

the question I will attack today is an old one,
a church father name Tertullian around 200AD..
first brought this question up....
and the question was reduced to a formula:

Jerusalem vs Athens....

now what on earth does that possible mean?

each city represents a different aspect of the human being....

Jerusalem is the city of faith, of revelation, of irrationalism... of faith...

Athens is the city of reason, of rationalism, against faith, science....

this theme of reason vs irrationalism has a long history....

many writers have written about it.. from Leo Strauss to lev Shestov
to Reynolds and Shapiro to Dostoyevsky and Voegelin…..

each of these writers approached the problem of reason vs faith/irrationalism
differently.....

I wish to tie it a bit further back.... we humans are plagued by our instincts,
we fight a daily battle between our rational side and our instinctually side....

I suggest that faith/irrationalism/revelation/instincts is a biological, evolutionary
solution to some of the vexing problems of being human...…

I would also suggest that reason is a very recent addition to the human family....

this would suggest that human beings aren't rational creatures at all,
but we are irrational, instinctual creatures who is finding our way to
being rational.....first came the instincts/irrationalism.. then much later
came the rational side of us....

millions, if not billions of human beings are still in the irrational, instinctual
development side of human progress.....while millions, but far, far less then
the instinctual side are the rational, logical thinkers......the battle of the
20th century has been between those are irrationalist and those who are
rationalist...…we may be able to make a case that with the arrival of the
enlightenment, making for the first time a case for rationalism, that
the war undeclared between rationalism and irrationalism became
overt and out in the public....

while it seems that the two are fighting a war to the death, the real issue is not
a fight to the death but a battle to a formula.... where we equally use
rationalism and, and irrationalism/instincts on a equal basis....
for example, let us take love... rationalism cannot ever, ever
understand love.... under no circumstances will rationalism ever
understand love...it simply cannot.... our instincts from which
love comes from, it understand love.....so much of who we are
as humans come from the irrational, instinctual side of us.....

so our formula will go something like this:

rationalism = irrationalism.....

they are not enemies but partners, much needed partners
in our struggle to become human, fully human....


so I believe that irrationalism, faith, instincts come from our
evolutionary beginning.... and as society became much more complex,
we needed to become rational to cope with or to understand society.....

under evolutionary pressure, we were forced to develop rationalism, logic,
science...….

we are problem solving creatures.. that is the basic function of being human..
and by having instincts we solve one problem and by having rationalism
we solve another problem.... and then when we connect the two into
one harmonious family, we will have solved a third problem....

and with each new problem must come new solutions.....

we can understand the last two centuries as being a war of rationalism
vs irrationalism.... the Nazi's are prime examples of irrationalism...…
as is any type of prejudice and/or bias or superstitions, myths,

the enlightenment for the first time, brought to the forefront
rationalism.....and science which is brought into the forefront
starting in the enlightenment age is rationalism.....
now one may argue that science/rationalism has been at work
for 200 years before the enlightenment... yes, but that rationalism
didn't become part of the public arena until the enlightenment...
science/philosophy/rationalism before the enlightenment was
strictly an engagement between a very small number of men....
it wasn't a public dispute, it was argued between a very small number
of people whereas the enlightenment brought this quiet affair into
the open, into the public eye...….and think about the history of
Europe since the beginning of the enlightenment....
we had the American revolution, the French revolution, the industrial
revolution, multiple wars and civil wars, World war one and two,
the holocaust and the atomic age...….quite a record of events for
only 200 years....and this came to be because the bringing into
light the battle between rationalism and irrationalism....

we cannot, we must not ever allow one side or the other to win the war,
we must engineer a union between rationalism and irrationalism.
we must find an equation that gives free reign to both as needed.....

it is my contention that instinct/irrationalism comes from
our evolutionary history and that reason came about because
instinct wasn't able to solve certain problems that arose,
the rise of rationalism is the rise of a solution to certain problems
of human existence..... the very fact we have a large and complex society
tells us that reason has been relatively successful in its tasks of being
able to allow human beings to work together... working together as we do
is a logical, rational thing to do...…….love is a irrational/instinctual thing we do...….

the quest of human beings is to rise to become the best human beings that they can be
by finding the possibilities that allow them to become who they are.... we use possibilities
to discover what is the range of human possibilities....in other words, we use
running, the possibility of running to discover what we can achieve as runners....
how far can we push ourselves in an attempt to become better runners....
how high can we climb the mountain, how far can we travel, how many
experiences can we have which we then use to understand what is possible for us....

we must push ourselves if we are to discover what it means to be human.....

and we use instincts and reason to push ourselves into a state of being
better humans.... I would say, I believe that reason is
the higher angel of our existence but others, others might claim the
highest state of being human is the instinctual/irrationalism part of us....

I think instincts has taken us as far as instincts can take us, as far
as irrationalism can take us... we must engage with rationalism to
take us to the next stage of being human.. and then we can return to
an engagement with our instincts... making rationalism
as much of our life as instincts/irrationalism is a goal certainly worth
exploring...…..

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we have two distinct and separate issues facing us.....

first we have the human condition, the human drama that
is our lives. Where we face questions of existence that
every single human being must face of birth, life and death....

the inherent questions of "what am I to do?" "What should I
believe in?" "what should I hope for?"...

and we have the second issue of the interaction between the single
human being and society/state.....

the questions of the personal, private interaction we have in
our quest to answer the Kantian questions of "who am I?" etc, etc.....
which is played over our lifetime in what we do and what we believe in....

and the second aspect of our relationship with the society/state...
and oftentimes the question of society/state requires us to diminish, if not
outright deny our own personal answers to the Kantian questions...
"what am I to do?" gets coopted by the society/state in its desire to survive.....
my own personal answers to the questions of "what am I to believe in" gets
answered by the society/state.....

society/state denies my own answers to who I am by the state passing
laws, fixation on morality, clinging to prejudices/myths/superstitions/habits.....

in other words, if my own personal answer is to love someone of my own sex,
the society/state denies me that option because my own answers are
antithetical to society/state own myths, prejudice/superstitions, habits.....

who gets the final say? in a nutshell that has been the question of
this ongoing battle between the individual and the society/state....

so we have multiple things going on which oftentimes makes it hard
to understand what exactly is going on...…..

in terms of the question of rationalism vs irrationalism, then
these questions become even more difficult...…

now notice that it is the rationalist that don't have a problem with
same sex marriage or abortions or other questions of morality.....

it is the irrationalist that have a problem with their prejudice and
superstitions and habits that doesn't allow them to accept gay marriage
or abortions or other questions of morality...…

this is the quite clear contrast between rationalism and irrationalism,
between Jerusalem and Athens.....

for the irrationalist, the sky is always falling because someone is not
obeying the laws of god, someone is defying god and that will bring
upon the people, widespread and complete disaster to the whole society....

this call to irrationalism, to engage with Jerusalem as a ways or means of
engaging in life...this often becomes a life and death matter for those who
follow Jerusalem because they see others as somehow destroying their way of life...
for denying their possibility for entering the kingdom of god.....as if that is the
only thing that matters... no one on planet earth is as important as their
reaching heaven..... a rather nihilistic viewpoint.... deny others their
values because it might interfere with your own pursuit of certain values,
which might get you into heaven.....not only nihilistic but selfish and petty...

if I could, I would demand that god takes me to hell if, if he would
allow everyone else the chance to go heaven...and I will expand upon that
later.....

and we have the second brick in the wall which is our own actions and
interactions we have with society.... it is not only between oneself
and oneself that we must engage with, but we engage with our self
and society/state as well....

how do I fit into society/the state?

and how do I fit within the state/society in regards to this question
of rationalism and irrationalism?

there are times when we must, must engage with the state
directly and straight up... which means we follow the rules,
we practice "state" morality even if it clashes with our own
standards of living...in short, we become "good citizens"

and their are times when we must, must engage with
direct opposition and direct civil disobedience to the society/state....

today, right here and right now, is a time of direct opposition to
the state/society.... the value being promoted by the state lead
by IQ45 are in direct violation of values I consider to be important...

where I believe that justice and freedom are the most important values
one could have within a society, IQ45 and his deluded followers have
values that are antithetical to what I consider to be the values that
I want the society/the state to follow.....

my problems with democracy have been often stated, but my answers
isn't less democracy like IQ45, but my answers is more democracy and more direct
democracy..... less of the representative democracy and more direct
involvement by the people....which is in direct conflict with IQ45
and his followers....

for me, the one of the answers to the human condition is
for us human beings to have greater involvement with our lives
and to have a greater involvement with the society/state...…

it is this engagement with the society/state that helps define who
we are.... recall the Greeks... they thought that the only way for
human beings to develop into better human beings was by the influence,
impact of the polis, the city....to the Greeks, the path to becoming
human, fully human was by living in the polis and by becoming
rational..... but as Nietzsche noted, they also had a place for
irrationalism that we haven't found a place for.....

we can account for rationalism and we can account for
irrationalism but we cannot, as yet, engage with both
of them on a equal basis.... the entire 20th century was
an engagement, a battle between rationalism and irrationalism....

recall that the age of enlightenment, the 17 and 18 century,
were ages of science, rationalism, of measurement and curiosity...

whereas the 19th century was an age of romanticism, where
the emotions/feelings were all important....

and the 20th century? that was an age that tried to somehow unite
these two modes of life... and the 20th century was an extremely
violent age that tried to pay homage to both rationalism and irrationalism...
we have World War one and two, the atomic bomb, the Holocaust,
the cold war, dramatic advances in science and technology,
the 60's with all its upheaval and protest.....so, can we somehow
separate the last 119 years into some separation between rationalism
and irrationalism? no, no we cannot....the last 119 years have been
a very uneasy mix of rationalism and irrationalism.... with IQ45 being
the latest episode of irrationalism, not the absolutely last, for nothing
is ever the absolutely last, life goes on... but IQ45 is about irrationalism
and is against anything rational or scientific or logical....and it is
our duty as Americans and as human beings to bring back the equation
which dominates our lives.... we must have balance between rationalism
and irrationalism.... the equation must be equal between rationalism and
irrationalism....we can write out this equation a couple of different ways...

rationalism = irrationalism

but we can write out this....

rationalism + irrationalism = being fully human....

so we are left with several issues, one of which is the
relationship between the individual and society/state.....

and no one answer will suffice because the relationship between
the individual and society/state is always changing and adapting....
depending upon the environment and situation and conditions
on the ground......at times, we must be good citizens and other
times we must oppose the society/state.... it depends upon what
is happening in any given situation...…

there is no fix answer to the question of when we must be
good citizens and when we must oppose the society/state....

my own inclination as a philosopher and as a human being,
is to stand in opposition to the society/state....

I feel to be a good human being requires me to be a "gadfly"
to the society/state...…

and all the great philosophers stood in opposition to the current,
prevailing tides of the time...…. and as I must stand in opposition
to the current, prevailing tides of our times.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we have a wide description of human beings...

Homo.....

for example, homo faber: working man.... by this we mean
that human beings are creatures that work...

we also have Homo Ludens: the playful man....
we can describe human beings as creatures that play

and we have other descriptions of human beings...

one of the descriptions given is Homo Economicus:
which is human beings are economic creatures..
and in that description we find both Adam Smith
and Karl Marx....

and that has been the description of human beings in modern times....

and if we were to describe human beings in the medieval times, we
would have said, Homo Religiosus… the religious man....
and for a thousand years, human beings in the west, were understood
to be religious men....the truly religious men of our age has
been men like Nikos Kazantzakis.... men who searched for god all their
lives...see his "Report to Greco"...…but men like this have been far
and few in between... most modern hero's have been men like
Carnegie and Rockefeller and bill gates....not religious types and
certainly not creative types.. homo creativus………
who stands in higher repute, Andrew Carnegie or someone like
James Joyce?

as for other types of human beings, we have homo politicus, man
as a political animal... coined by Plato....

as for me, I don't believe in homo..... man, human beings
are much more then just one type of description....

we can choose to engage with our own possibilities....

as for rational man or for that matter, irrational man...

means we define human beings in a certain fashion...
but that fashion isn't really defined...
for we each of us, is some mixture of rational
and irrational.....

my hope is that people at least take the time to
understand and think about who they are and if
they are rational or irrational....

as I am a rationalist, I prefer rationalism..
but that doesn't make it right, just my preference....

but I see that irrationalism does have its value...
for example in understanding and defining love, for
example...…..being rational won't ever be able to understand
or define love....being in love lies beyond rationalism....
and any attempt to define love in terms of rationalism will fail.....

Kropotkin

[iambiguous]

this call to irrationalism, to engage with Jerusalem as a ways or means of
engaging in life...this often becomes a life and death matter for those who
follow Jerusalem because they see others as somehow destroying their way of life...
for denying their possibility for entering the kingdom of god.....as if that is the
only thing that matters... no one on planet earth is as important as their
reaching heaven..... a rather nihilistic viewpoint.... deny others their
values because it might interfere with your own pursuit of certain values,
which might get you into heaven.....not only nihilistic but selfish and petty...

Again, in my view, you are making these ponderous "philosophical" distinctions between the rationalists and the irrationalists. As though, for all practical purposes, the rationalists are expected -- obligated? -- to share your own moral and political prejudices. While the irrationalists [of course] are all in Trumpworld.

And what on earth does believing in a God that gives you Commandments on this side of the grave and grants you immortality and salvation on the other side of it have to do with nihilism? Even as it is generally understood. Religion is basically the opposite of nihilism. Nihilists make the assumption that human existence is 1] essentially meaningless 2] ends in oblivion and that 3] "in the absence of God all things are permitted".

There are no rational and irrational value judgments. There are only particular values that, over the course of living your one and only unique life, you have come to embody existentially.

But that is just my own subjective/subjunctive "I" grappling to understand the things that I choose to do given the components of my own moral philosophy.

And, yet, in my view, it is in understanding the self here as I do that the objectivists are most apt to fiercely reject. After all, what if it actually is applicable to them too?

[Peter Kropotkin]

this call to irrationalism, to engage with Jerusalem as a ways or means of
engaging in life...this often becomes a life and death matter for those who
follow Jerusalem because they see others as somehow destroying their way of life...
for denying their possibility for entering the kingdom of god.....as if that is the
only thing that matters... no one on planet earth is as important as their
reaching heaven..... a rather nihilistic viewpoint.... deny others their
values because it might interfere with your own pursuit of certain values,
which might get you into heaven.....not only nihilistic but selfish and petty...

Again, in my view, you are making these ponderous "philosophical" distinctions between the rationalists and the irrationalists. As though, for all practical purposes, the rationalists are expected -- obligated? -- to share your own moral and political prejudices. While the irrationalists [of course] are all in Trumpworld.

And what on earth does believing in a God that gives you Commandments on this side of the grave and grants you immortality and salvation on the other side of it have to do with nihilism? Even as it is generally understood. Religion is basically the opposite of nihilism. Nihilists make the assumption that human existence is 1] essentially meaningless 2] ends in oblivion and that 3] "in the absence of God all things are permitted".

There are no rational and irrational value judgments. There are only particular values that, over the course of living your one and only unique life, you have come to embody existentially.

But that is just my own subjective/subjunctive "I" grappling to understand the things that I choose to do given the components of my own moral philosophy.

And, yet, in my view, it is in understanding the self here as I do that the objectivists are most apt to fiercely reject. After all, what if it actually is applicable to them too?

K: ah, we are making assumptions.. I stand with Nietzsche in the fact that I
am against nihilism.... I do believe that there are values but not in the way you define it....
I don't expect that rationalist to believe in my version of rationalism....my vision,
my understanding, my viewpoint is far more shades of gray then black and white....

I believe in a shades of gray universe....black and white doesn't exists within my
viewpoint.....you can be a rationalist without believing in a single thing I believe in...
rationalism isn't about having specific viewpoints, or believing in specific
idea's...rationalism is more about the method, the way we view the universe...…
and not about the specific idea's we might hold....

for me, I really don't care what you believe in because I am still seeking
what I need to do, or what I need to believe in or what values I should have....

and in defining my values, I can then go out into the universe and discover
what is my place in the universe....I go from inside out instead of outside in....

my values derive from what I believe in, not what the society/state believes in...
and this is quite often why the society/state and I are in conflict....
you believe that I am proscribing some set of values for rationalist to follow
whereas I am simply laying out the possibilities for one to believe in and, and
if you wish, you can engage or not engage with those possibilities... for it
doesn't really matter to me if you do or if you don't....

I lay out my argument for the values I believe in...
that doesn't mean that I expect or even want other rationalist to
believe in what I believe in.....you think I am laying out a course
of action whereas I am merely attempting to get people to think about
what it means to them...are you an rationalist? are you an irrationalist?

the question I ask is about what are your choices, what are your
possibilities? here is my choices and here is why I choose these values
or these possibilities...…..my goal is simply to get people to engage
in what is possibly for them, not to engage in what I have chosen…

if you reevaluate your possibilities because of something I wrote,
then my efforts have been rewarded... it doesn't matter to me
if you then choose to follow me or not... for me, the exploration of
who we are is more important then the actual choices made...…

my question is not, you must follow me into rationalism...
no, my question is, are you a rationalist? and if so, why?

the question of engagement is a personal, private one....

do you engage with who you are? are you living with values
that were indoctrinated into you as a child? have you begun
the exploration of who you are by knowing thyself? and have
you begun an reevaluation of values by which you find out which
values are really your values and have you become who you are
by incorporating those discovered new values into who you are...
have you become who you are by becoming those values?

those are my questions... not if you hold specific values or have a specific
understanding of the universe....are you a rationalist or an irrationalist?

that answer is yours and your alone.. what you do with it is your choice...

I merely suggest that one possibility is to be a rationalist and here is why.....

I am merely offering choices/possibilities.. not definitive answers to the questions
of life..

what do you believe in and why?

that is my question....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

for me it is the questions we ask, not the answers we find....

who are the greatest thinkers and scientist ever?

think about it... we have Socrates and Einstein and
newton.... it wasn't about the answers they gave, but
the questions they ask, that made them so influential,
so respected...….

and for me, it is about the questions we ask, not the answers we get....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we must rethink our beginning place for philosophy...

we exist within a Darwinian universe....

thus we have a place to begin...…

the beginning of human existence is when life itself was created,
all those billions of years ago....we are the children of all those years
of evolution.....thus we are animals and as such, we are simple the latest
of the instinctual creatures...and that is the second point....

we are first and foremost, creatures with instincts...
reason comes later....

thus the Greeks are wrong.... we are not rational creatures,
we are irrational creatures who struggle to become rational....

the value of the Pre-Socratic philosophers and of Socrates himself,
is that for very first time, in the west anyway, is our engagement with
rationality... before that, we engaged with instincts, with irrationalism...

but with instinct, irrationalism.. it can only take us so far....
as we developed far greater and more sophisticated society/state,
we could no longer depend upon instinct to guide us.... the Greeks
turned to rationality to explain and explore the world.... with the Greeks
we have the process of inquiry.... which is the base word of history, philosophy,
math, the disciplines that we associate with the Greeks...…. but think about
that word, discipline... in the dictionary it says this

discipline: the practice of training people to obey the rules or a
code of behavior, using punishment to correct disobedience....

as our society/state becomes more complicated, we are ever more in
need of discipline in being able to hold and maintain structure and
discipline within society...… in other words, we need to be rational to
be able to keep the society/state stable and working....

instinct/irrationalism cannot exists within a society/state because
it becomes to chaotic and allows entropy to come into play....

one of the definitions of entropy is this:

lack of order or predictability; a gradual decline into disorder....

we learned to be rational in order to prevent this decline in order
within the society/state.....

for a society/state to exists and thrive, not descend into chaos or into
further entropy, we cannot allow instincts, irrationalism to exists....

if we explore this idea further, we can see that idea's like tribalism
cannot succeed because tribalism is too small a notion to allow society/state
to succeed.. in other words, our state is far to large to allow simple tribalism
to succeed...the idea of a tribe can only work on a small, limited scale
and modern society/state of millions, indeed billions cannot function on
a tribal scale because it cannot hold the weight of all those millions/billions...
tribalism is simply a too small scale system to work in modern society.....

we have a conflict in modern society..... we have people demanding
tribalism when the system of tribalism simply cannot handle the
sheer number of people we have in any given society/state.....

and what tribalism am I referring to?

the tribalism of nationalism and the white only movement
and American first, those tribalism are simply too small to
engage properly with the sheer number of people we have....
even a state like California could not sustain tribalism because
it excludes far too many people...….the path into the future is
a path of inclusion and tribalism cannot adjust to this inclusion.....
tribalism is all about exclusion....how can I say this?
why the sheer number of people in any society/state we have in
the modern world....

it is by rationalism and not instincts that we learn discipline and
to maintain order and not descend into a gradual decline into
chaos and disorder....

now think about another possibility... the Jews and their
central, core belief that obedience to the law is the
main, core aspect of their religion....

first, last and always... obedience to the law is the Jewish message...
that obedience is simply another means of maintaining discipline, of
not descending into disorder....it is rational to obey the law to avoid
disorder and chaos, in both society/and the state and within a religious context....

and what is the Christian message? obey god or suffer in hell forever.....

and once again, we have as a message to obey, to have discipline to
maintain order...…...to avoid disorder and chaos.....

with each example, we see how the goal of society/state is to
maintain order or to avoid disorder and chaos.....

instinct and irrationalism doesn't do that.. instinct and irrationalism
increases disorder and chaos within a system and as the system
increases in size, the greater the need for discipline an order
a system needs to hold it shape.....to prevent disorder and chaos....

for the larger a system, the greater its energy needs to maintain that
system...in other words, a system with 25 people needs X amount of
energy to maintain, as time increases and the system grows larger,
we must increase the energy needs of that system...….

in our current, modern systems we need to increase our energy needs
substantially to maintain order and avoid disorder an chaos....

instincts and irrationalism takes energy away from our current systems
and allows a greater increase in disorder and chaos....

but at some point, disorder and chaos will bring its own energy into
the mix which means that we cannot discard disorder and chaos
because of the energy that they bring into a system.....

think about it this way... as your days pass into weeks and months,
sometimes we need some disorder and chaos to bring energy into
our lives...…..we need to liven thing up to increase our energy needs.....

but not to liven things up... just a bit to shake things up....so as always
there is an equation, a balance to maintain to keep a system running....
we must balance our need for order and the energy disorder brings in.....
for the name of the game within any system, be it biological, mechanical,
natural, the name of the game is energy.. how much energy a system
needs to maintain order and prevent disorder and chaos.....

so, the next question becomes, how much energy does our current
social, political systems need to maintain themselves?

so the next starting point of philosophy is a question of
energy, of how much energy is needed to maintain
a system or how much energy is needed to avoid disorder
and chaos?

the next point is this question of balance or of holding equations....

we must think about life, our life and every life/system in terms
of the balance/equation it needs to hold its form and function
without a descent into disorder and chaos.....

the questions of philosophy change if we think of philosophy in
different terms then what we have in the past.....

if we think of philosophy in terms of the new starting points
of philosophy...…

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

in thinking about our "new" starting points,
where should we begin?

is man the measure of all things?

should the starting point be nature?

removing all "doubtful" things as Descartes did, doesn't seem
to help our cause....

is the starting point religion? or science? or philosophy? or nature?

we have science which has over the last 119 years turn from
being solid, secure, stable or said another way, mathematical....

we have enough science to suggest that the universe isn't as firm as we were
lead to believe.....

most of modern science has been or has become a study of probabilities...

evolution is about randomness and chance and probability.....

quantum mechanics is about probability, randomness, chance....

two of our major scientific theories have chance, randomness, probability at
the heart of the nature of their theory....

a simple look at human existence tells us a similar story....

one man lives and another dies as a measure of chance or randomness...

as I review my life, I see how chance and randomness has played a key
role within my own life.... because I was accepted at one job and rejected
at another, purely by chance, has made all the difference in the world
to my life....

the fundamental factor in my life has been my hearing loss..
and that was random as hell.... my older sister was told not to
go over to a neighbor's house to play because the children
had measles and my mom was pregnant with me....she went there
and I suffer a hearing loss because of it..... you can't get much
more random then that.....

and all our histories, personally and collectively, are littered
with stories about the random nature of the universe and our interactions
with this randomness, chance....

I may be stuck down with an heart attack today, or I may choke
to death on my lunch.....an random, chance occurrence that
ends my life.. or I may spend the day reading and watching tv....

there really isn't any rhyme or reason to our lives and the events
that happen within our lives....randomly I might find a letter
from my wife which suggest she is having an affair.... my life is
torn apart by a random, chance event as finding the letter....

this randomness of our lives is mirrored by our collective
randomness.... on TV, at this very moment is the hearing where
they are talking to the guy who deals with whistleblowers.....

how random is this entire issue? how it came about?

the whistleblower themselves, he or she, felt that the
matter they were talking about wasn't being taken seriously
and so they went out and tried to interest the media, into
engaging in this issue... and suddenly... boom, someone notices
and this whole thing begins....

we see the present and how random the present is
and we really see how random and full of chance is the future....

and this is why we have conservatives fixated upon the past..
the past is secure and solid and fixed....this fixation on the past is
one method of dealing with the nature of chance and randomness in
our lives....the fixation is a coping mechanism to deal with
ambiguity of the present/future....ambiguity that arises from
the many possibilities that we each have in our lives...
my life has possibilities like right now, I might go to the fridge
and get something to eat or maybe not....

these choices, possibilities are oftentimes overwhelming
and quite scary...…. conservatives are people who are overwhelmed
by their possibilities or choices and they retreat into the past to escape
the possibilities, the randomness of their lives...…….

conservatives are always saying, things were better in the past..
but why where things better in the past? because they
were known things, it seems like, but only seems like, that
choice, possibilities weren't there in the past.....
there is no ambiguity in the past because it is already written...
it cannot be changed... choices, possibilities, randomness doesn't
exist into the past because it is already done.. already completed...

that is what conservatives want, which is why they are against
freedom and choices...… because they are afraid of the possibilities
and choices available.....

the young embrace their choices, their possibilities and they seem
to relish chance and randomness... as I am old, chance and randomness
is no longer my friend.... I don't handle chaos and unpredictability very well
anymore... it is a function of being old.... and I am old...…

to fight for freedom means you are fighting for chance, randomness,
unpredictability.. the right to freely choose your possibilities and choices.....

to fight for security, safety means you are fighting for less choices, less
possibilities.... when fighting for security, you are trying to remove
chance, unpredictability, randomness...…

that is why the old fight for security and the young fight for freedom....

it suits the way they understand and approach possibilities and choices ....

and so to return the matter at hand...

where do we start? How do we begin to understand our place
in the sun and what we are to do? or what should we believe in
or what are we suppose to hope for? or what should our values be?

it is all so random and full of chances and possibilities....

which choices and possibilities to you believe in?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

let us try a slightly different tack.....

all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends with it....

let us begin there..... all knowledge of reality.....

so, our theories of realty as given by scientist, philosophers start
with, begin with experience......I might say, I don't believe in
god because I haven't experience god...my experiences define my
theories of reality, my definition of reality comes from my experiences....

so far, so good.... but we already hit a problem.....

my experiences, my reality is different from yours because of random
things in my life... I have a hearing loss, that is experience but that also
means I experience reality differently then you do because of my hearing loss.....

and you experience reality differently then I do because you have
your hearing, but perhaps, perhaps, you eyesight is less then mine...
because of this random event, you experience reality differently then I do....
our own physical natures force us to experience reality differently and thus
we understand or explain reality from experience differently....

if I take out my hearing aid, the universe is a very quiet universe.....

my experience of hearing loss tells me the universe is a quiet one....
but you can hear and you hear a very loud and noisy universe....

so who is right? is the world/reality a quiet one like mine or is it
a loud, noise world/reality?

we both are right...….

because of our being different physical beings, we experience the universe differently because
we are different people....

we can stretch this out to a wealthy person will experience a different
universe then a poor person solely because of their wealth or lack thereof.....

if our experiences are the place where we derive our understanding of the universe,
then as we have different experiences, we have different understanding, a different
reality then other people...….

that is why Iam and I cannot reach a consensus of what is reality, of
what is the experience the universe shows us.....because his experience
is different then mine, his reality, his understanding of the universe is
different...…...we might not even agree that love for example
is all we need, as the beatles think, no, he might thing because of
his experiences with love, that love stinks and we should instead engage
in some other basic factor to believe in.....like hate or greed or happiness
or honor or...…….

Hobbes was the first to admit that his entire existence was an existence
of fear... his mother was pregnant with him during the Spanish Armada of
1588 and he has felt fear ever since...his entire philosophy is derived from
the fear he felt his entire life...…..and we are no different....
we experience things and they color our perceptions of reality....

now we must also admit that we have experience the probabilities
and randomness of life.....this must influence our interpretations
of what reality is... we have ambiguity because we can
give to every single experience in our lives, a valid and different
interpretation.....

I am who I a am because I was born a man or as white or
from an Anglo-Saxon family or my father was Irish and my mother
was English....or I grew up with 4 other siblings, mostly sisters........

my experiences have defined who I am and how I view reality.....
but my experiences of having a large family isn't your reality, isn't
your experience, so you have a different reality because your family
wasn't as large as mine....

given all of this, I don't see how we can create, define
a reality that includes all of us... our experiences are different so
our understanding of reality is different..... the great
system builders like Kant or Hegel or Marx... they failed because
of the fact that everyone has a different reality that doesn't include
the aspects of the system that they put into place.....

for example, I fervently disagree with both Marx and Smith that human beings
are Homo Economicus…. economic man... that we are the sum of our economic
activity...… my experiences, my reality has been different...so I believe differently....
just as I disagree with man being Homo Religiosus, man is a religious being.....

it is not in my experience..... but others, other might believe that
man is a religious being because of their experiences...…

so, how do we come to a consensus if we experience reality differently?

I don't think we can.... or it will be so broad as to be very basic.....

so, what does this mean to philosophy or to science or to history?

that is an interesting question.....

as our experiences define our reality....

how has your experiences defined your reality.....

Kropotkin

[iambiguous]

K: ah, we are making assumptions.. I stand with Nietzsche in the fact that I
am against nihilism.... I do believe that there are values but not in the way you define it....
I don't expect that rationalist to believe in my version of rationalism....my vision,
my understanding, my viewpoint is far more shades of gray then black and white....

Yes, but the ubermen are basically in the same boat that we are: "thrown" fortuitously at birth out into a particular world historically, culturally and experientially. Then having particular value judgments shoved into their heads as children. Only to go out into a world as adults and come into contact with others who have been indoctrinated to embody conflicting values.

What I'll need when they relate the manner in which they have separated themselves from the herd is an account of how they make this distinction in particular contexts. Why the focus on "I" rather then "we"? What constitutes "the right thing to do" given a No God world? A world in which their own values can only reflect "I" as an existential contraption out in a particular world understood from a particular point of view? Isn't that always my point with the objectivists?

And are not many Nietzscheans themselves objectivists with regard to the "will to power"? But: Whose will in defense of using power to effectuate what moral and political prejudices?

I believe in a shades of gray universe....black and white doesn't exists within my
viewpoint.....you can be a rationalist without believing in a single thing I believe in...
rationalism isn't about having specific viewpoints, or believing in specific
idea's...rationalism is more about the method, the way we view the universe...…
and not about the specific idea's we might hold....

for me, I really don't care what you believe in because I am still seeking
what I need to do, or what I need to believe in or what values I should have....

and in defining my values, I can then go out into the universe and discover
what is my place in the universe....I go from inside out instead of outside in....

So, you are basically agreeing with me that both liberal and conservative value judgments are derived from this inherently ambiguous shades of gray world? Predicated largely on the actual trajectory of experiences any individual might have?

That what you have thought yourself into believing that you need to do is just the liberal rendition of what the conservatives have thought themselves into believing that they need to do. Your "I" here is in turn fractured and fragmented, down in a hole morally and politically that revolves around this frame of mind:

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.

But, here again, we would need to bring this very "general description" intellectual contraption itself out into the world and discuss a particular policy in a particular context that liberals and conservatives are at odds regarding.

my values derive from what I believe in, not what the society/state believes in...

But you live in a particular society at a particular historical and cultural juncture, and, having had a particular set of experiences, have come to be predisposed to the liberal narrative.

Or are you arguing that, in being rational, liberal values will necessarily follow --- ideologically? naturally? deontologically?

you believe that I am proscribing some set of values for rationalist to follow
whereas I am simply laying out the possibilities for one to believe in and, and
if you wish, you can engage or not engage with those possibilities... for it
doesn't really matter to me if you do or if you don't....

This is far too abstract for me to respond to.

I lay out my argument for the values I believe in...
that doesn't mean that I expect or even want other rationalist to
believe in what I believe in.....you think I am laying out a course
of action whereas I am merely attempting to get people to think about
what it means to them...are you an rationalist? are you an irrationalist?

Over and over and over again, I can only ask: rational or irrational in regard to what particular set of behaviors that liberals and conservatives are at odds regarding? I'm less interested in a "technical" discussion of rationalism here, and more interested in taking whatever technical argument is arrived at out into the world of actual conflicting goods. Ever and always at the existential intersection of dasein, value judgments and political economy.

the question I ask is about what are your choices, what are your
possibilities? here is my choices and here is why I choose these values
or these possibilities...…..my goal is simply to get people to engage
in what is possibly for them, not to engage in what I have chosen…

The question I ask is "how are these choices and possibilities and goals" not embodied in "I" as an existential contraption derived from the manner in which I construe human interactions in my signature threads? How is the "I" of others construed differently in regard to reacting to a particular context that most of us here are likely to be familiar with.

if you reevaluate your possibilities because of something I wrote,
then my efforts have been rewarded... it doesn't matter to me
if you then choose to follow me or not... for me, the exploration of
who we are is more important then the actual choices made...…

Okay, but from my frame of mind, if the reevaluation is no less an existential contraption rooted in dasein and conflicting goods, nothing really changes other than the very real consequences of very real behaviors. And it is precisely my being unable to feel comforted and consoled in convincing myself that the "real me" is in sync with "the right thing to do" that sustains my own fragmented and fractured "I" here.

do you engage with who you are? are you living with values
that were indoctrinated into you as a child? have you begun
the exploration of who you are by knowing thyself? and have
you begun an reevaluation of values by which you find out which
values are really your values and have you become who you are
by incorporating those discovered new values into who you are...
have you become who you are by becoming those values?

As always, in my view, you take questions like this up into the clouds of abstraction. As though both the liberals and the conservatives can't give you the answers you want and still insist that to truly be rational and virtuous you must share their own values. As though once you jettison your childhood indoctrination you can come to a set of true values.

[Peter Kropotkin]

I am not going to give a point by point discussion of your interesting post....

nope, that gets rather boring and tiresome...

no, I shall try to hit the high spots as it were....

I think the bottom line question for both of us is this,
how does experience change, define, understand
what it means to be human?

as a white man, I cannot under any circumstances know or understand
what it means to be black or to be a women...… I simply cannot know....

my philosophy, as it were, is based upon my experiences in life..
but my experiences are by their very existence, limited, I cannot
experience what it means to be black or what it means to be a women....

thus by definition, my philosophy is going to be limited to me being white or
me being a man or me being average height and weight... or my having a hearing
loss.... our "philosophy" cannot go past or beyond what our experiences are.....

implicit within my "philosophy" is my being white... it isn't stated,
and it isn't even mentioned, but it is there...…….the fact of being
a person of color or a women changes the very experiences we are trying
to understand and/or evaluate...………

I can make the universal statement "all people seek love"
but as a universal statement it fails because clearly, and it has
been in my experience, that some people aren't driven by the need of love...
they have other needs that they are trying to meet.....

what is the only universal statements I can make about human beings...

one: we are born...
two: that we live, however short or long,
three: we die...…

those are the three, truly universal statements I can make about human beings
and their experiences....birth, life, death.... that's it....

and we try to create philosophies and templates and systems
and understanding of life, from these three basic universal statements....

Marx said "life is".....
Adam Smith said, "Life is"....
Hume said, "life is".....
Socrates said, "life is".....
Nietzsche said, "life is"...…

and they are all right, because life for them is what their experiences
have shown them what life is.....but for a German pastors son, life is
far different then a Greek stone mason and that difference is their
experiences....

and Kropotkin says, "life is"..... and all he is saying is that life
is what his particular experiences have been... nothing more....
his experiences have created his realty.....

nothing more.....

there is no "true" understanding of what reality is....

we act as if there is, but there isn't...…

it is all about our own experiences and what we make of them....

my own experience might be, don't trust blond hair... blue eye people....

and yet, the Nazi's made an entire philosophy about the greatness of blond hair
blue eye people...….

who do we believe?

and most importantly, why?

so how do we navigate the road from individual experience
to having a universal philosophy?

what is necessary for us to make the transition from owning our own
experiences to having a universal understanding of experiences even
though we ourselves can only have specific individual experiences?

what I have done is really restate IAM questions...…

how do we turn individual, personal experiences into a general, universal
understanding of the reality we exist in?

when given that each individual, personal experience is very different
and experienced by the one person..... only a few people will every
experience my particular hearing loss, and only those people will
understand my life and struggles... so how would I be able to translate
my personal experiences of hearing loss into a wide, universal understanding
of what it means to be hearing impaired?

that is the struggle right now..... how do we translate personal,
individual experiences into a universal understanding of what it means
to be human?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

let us try this:

a rather famous document will be reevaluated based on our new understanding
of experiences.....

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the laws of nature and of nature's god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions
of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to
the separation."

Let us start here.....when in the course of human events? ummmm,
I don't have that experience.... I only have my experience.. I cannot
speak for "human events because which human events am I speaking for?

"it become necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands"

one people.. what the hell is he talking about....in my experience I
don't know anything about this "one people" he is talking about...for in my
experience is I don't see "one people", I see thousands of people. I cannot
somehow leap from those thousands of people I see to "ONE people"

this entire first paragraph is about assumptions and guesses that I personally
cannot see or experience.....

"when the laws of nature" I have never seen the laws of nature.. I couldn't even
tell you what the laws of nature are? which laws of nature is he talking about?
gravity? evolution? entropy? or are they some mysterious laws I know nothing about
and have never even experienced?

if we put the entire first paragraph up to an examination of experience, it
fails the test of experience...

so let us examine the second paragraph:

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness- that to secure
these rights,, government are instituted among men, deriving their just power
from the consent of the governed"

ok, let us examine this under the lens of experience....

" we hold these truths to be self evident"

whoa, whoa nelly...which we are we talking about.. and truths?
truths are discovered by their being in synch with our experiences
but each of us have far different experiences and so the truth cannot
be a we thing because we don't have the same experiences....
our experiences create our reality.... that is a basic fundamental fact
so the truth/reality cannot be the same for each of us as we don't have
the same experiences, hence we cannot have the same reality....and thus
being self evident, being self evident to whom? certainly not to me,
based upon their various, different experiences, others might not agree either....

and for me, this second line is the most questionable.....

"that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

are you fucking kidding me? if there is one fact we can agree upon based
upon experience, is that men aren't created equal... and that very argument
has been made time and again here in ILP.....to say that men are created
equal means you are reaching beyond experience to make that statement....
for our collective experience cannot ever admit such a foolish statement
that all men are created equal when some men run slow and some men
run fast and some men think fast and some men think slow and
some men are funny and some aren't... based upon experience, that there
is no possibility that "all men are created equal"... if there is one statement
we can make is that all men are vastly different in their abilities and their
possibilities....to make this statement is to once again, go beyond
what we have experienced... to make such a grand statement that
ignores what we experienced every single day is foolish in every single way.....

let us continue, creator? umm, in my experience there is no creator and
that statement is reaching far beyond our experience....
and that isn't even talking about "certain unalienable rights" what the
hell, that implies something that my experience has no experience with,
"certain unalienable rights" sounds like metaphysical gibberish...that
has no place in a reality that values experience more then anything else....

"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"

to suggest that all men only pursue "life, liberty and happiness"
simply flies in the face of certainly my experience and it flies
in the face of what we know, know that people pursue....

for some, for many in fact, experience has shown us that they fly
away from life, and millions are right now, as this very moment, dam
and determined to turn over our "liberty" to Putin and his lap dog,
IQ45... and happiness, what the fuck.... we have had many, many
different ideals for which we pursued, Aristotle suggest that man pursues
knowledge, many have said including the Buddha, that we should pursue
a negation of desires which will lead us to enlightenment, which is a pursuit,
and some have said, the pursuit of god is the only valuable pursuit worth engaging
with, and some have said, hedonism and some have said, renounce life itself.....

among these possibilities, which is conducive to our experience?

given our experiences, which of these possibilities are possibilities which
we want to explore?

and it depends upon our experiences that decides upon which
of these many possibilities we might engage with...…..

that there is no universal possibility based upon our experiences
cannot be denied.... we don't have universal experiences, we have
individual experiences, so what individual experiences can
we use to understand such universal understanding as
the pursuit of happiness when many people don't engage
with the pursuit of happiness as their means of expression
of human values...….personally, I don't engage with the
pursuit of happiness, I engage with the pursuit of wisdom,
but that is personal preference based upon my own
individual values and experiences...…

so how do I make the leap from individual experiences to
universal values like "all men are created equal" or
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"?

this becomes the question.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

if we cannot, cannot believe that we can use our individual experiences
to be able to create a universal philosophy, then what method can we
use to create a universal philosophy such as created by Kant or Hegel
or Marx or even such mainstream philosophers such as Nietzsche or
Hume or Heidegger?

at best we can say, that their own individual philosophies arose
from their own experiences and that those personal experiences
from which they derived their philosophy from, isn't our experiences
and we cannot, cannot reach out of our own experiences to accept
someone else experiences as being more valid then our experiences.....

each person's experiences are by definition, they own experiences
and I have nothing to compare their experiences with my own....
I didn't live in the 1870's like Nietzsche nor was I a son of a German
Pastor nor was I educated at the university of Bonn or Leipzig university....

and Nietzsche wasn't a checker in a grocery store as I am, we have
vastly different experiences and thus we cannot, based upon experiences,
create a shared philosophy that will unite the two of us into some understanding....
again to be clear, based upon our experiences which are vastly different.....
now we might share a philosophy but that isn't based upon experiences.....
for we share none.....

so how do we, Nietzsche and I connect with a shared philosophy if we
don't have a shared experiences?

we might oppose the same things, but that opposition isn't based upon
experiences, it is based upon something outside of and beyond
experiences.....

I use Nietzsche because at one time, I was a fervent believer in Nietzsche
and his philosophy.... today, not so much.....

but upon what do I now understand his philosophy if I can't
use experience to make that connection/or understanding??

there might be a way.....

think about it.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

several days of work and I'm finally back...…

when last seen, I was offering a challenge.....

how is it possible for us to have a universal philosophy from
our distinct and separate and individual experiences...………

John Locke offered us one theory of experiences that the
mind is a blank slate, "Tabula rasa", or what he literally said was,
"white paper" and experiences write themselves on this "white paper",
on the mind...…..

and on the other hand we have those like Kant or Plato, who
in Plato was the theory of the eternal forms.... we don't create anything
new, we simply rediscover what the eternal forms are and we recreate them...
the circle is simply a rediscovery of the eternal form of the circle which
exists... somewhere......and Kant tried to escape from Locke and Hume,
by positing categories....we have within our minds, certain categories upon
which we can understand experiences..... for example, in our mind, we have
the category of modality.... which is possibility, existence... and we judge
experiences by these categories... which is basically a variation off of Plato.....
but instead of the eternal forms, we have categories from which to understand
the universe.....

this has been one of the basic, fundamental discussions within philosophy over
the last 2500 years..... how do we understand experiences?
what is the relationship between experiences and philosophy?
or what is the relationship between experiences and history or
economics or sociology or mathematics?

Marx saw from the rise of the Industrial revolution the need for human
beings to obey the "laws" of dialectical materialism, which is communism....

or said another way, human beings have needs and those needs because
of the class system currently in place, cannot be met because
people who don't own the means of production have no way/means to
achieve their needs... whereas those who own the means of production,
do have a way of meeting their needs... and the clash is between those
who have and those who don't.....

and from the exact rise of the Industrial revolution, Adam Smith saw
that human beings must obey the "laws" of the invisible hand of god....
which is capitalism

and Adam Smith created the myth that all that was needed to fulfill one's needs
was to work hard, keep one's nose to the grindstone and thus being able to
fulfill one's needs...….a myth that perpetuated even today...… whereas
by experience, we can easily see that this myth has no reality in it....

so by these examples, we can see how we engage in our understanding
with experiences, use them going forward.....

the root word of experience also is the root word of experiment...

and that is something that Nietzsche picked up on....life is an experiment,
life is experience... this, for Nietzsche was the exact same sentence....

so, now what?

Kropotkin

[iambiguous]

I think the bottom line question for both of us is this,
how does experience change, define, understand
what it means to be human?

as a white man, I cannot under any circumstances know or understand
what it means to be black or to be a women...… I simply cannot know....

my philosophy, as it were, is based upon my experiences in life..
but my experiences are by their very existence, limited, I cannot
experience what it means to be black or what it means to be a women....

thus by definition, my philosophy is going to be limited to me being white or
me being a man or me being average height and weight... or my having a hearing
loss.... our "philosophy" cannot go past or beyond what our experiences are.....

implicit within my "philosophy" is my being white... it isn't stated,
and it isn't even mentioned, but it is there...…….the fact of being
a person of color or a women changes the very experiences we are trying
to understand and/or evaluate...………

Yes, that is well put. I merely expand upon this here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

There is the part of "I" that, demographically or otherwise, is awash in actual objective facts. Facts able to be demonstrated to others. And then there's the part of "I" that reacts to what can be determined to be facts, in order to form considerably more subjective/subjunctive moral and political judgments.

Mary either can or cannot demonstrate to others that she is pregnant, who impregnated her and what the circumstances surrunding the pregnancy are. She can then demonstate that she wants to abort the pregnancy. She can tell us why.

But how can others reacting to these facts demonstrate in turn whether aborting the unborn baby/clump of cells is or is not moral?

At best they can point to the objective legal consequences of aborting a pregnancy in a particular jurisdiction.

what is the only universal statements I can make about human beings...

one: we are born...
two: that we live, however short or long,
three: we die...…

And, in regard to two, the objective fact that there are things that we all need to live: access to food, water, clothing shelter, defense.

And this fact can become vital when the discussion shifts to, say, "natural rights" or the role of government in providing for the basic needs of all citizens.

those are the three, truly universal statements I can make about human beings
and their experiences....birth, life, death.... that's it....

and we try to create philosophies and templates and systems
and understanding of life, from these three basic universal statements....

Marx said "life is".....
Adam Smith said, "Life is"....
Hume said, "life is".....
Socrates said, "life is".....
Nietzsche said, "life is"...…

and they are all right, because life for them is what their experiences
have shown them what life is.....but for a German pastors son, life is
far different then a Greek stone mason and that difference is their
experiences....

Still, from my perspective, it is not what these men said or believe or claim to know. It is instead ever and always what they can demonstrate to others that all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

And not just in a general description intellectual contraptions but in regard to an an actual context in which value judgments are in conflict. Whether the issue is capitalism vs. socialism or abortion or immigration laws...or jaywalking, littering and public nudity.

and Kropotkin says, "life is"..... and all he is saying is that life
is what his particular experiences have been... nothing more....
his experiences have created his realty.....

nothing more.....

there is no "true" understanding of what reality is....

we act as if there is, but there isn't...…

it is all about our own experiences and what we make of them....

Yes, that is basically what iambiguous says in turn. But, in the is/ought world, he now says it down in his "hole"; and by way of a "fractured and fragmented" "I". He was once convinced that the liberals were right and the conservatives were wrong as a moral and political objectivist himself. Now he recognizes the extent to which his "I" here is an existential contraption embedded problematically in dasein. That he has no way of predicting whether new experiences, new relationships and access to new ideas will or will not change his mind.

my own experience might be, don't trust blond hair... blue eye people....

and yet, the Nazi's made an entire philosophy about the greatness of blond hair
blue eye people...….

who do we believe?

and most importantly, why?

My argument here is that there may well be a frame of mind able to demonstrate that the Nazis were inherently/necessarily acting in an immoral manner. But "here and now" that makes sense to me only to the extent that an omniscient/omnipotent God does in fact exiist able to demonstrate it/resolve it Himself.

In the interim, "I" here remains but an existential contraption to me. There are facts able to be demonstrated about fascism. But our reaction to those facts is unable to establish universally how all rational/virtuous men and women are obligated to react to it.

Anymore then there is a necessary frame of mind that all rational/virtuous men and women are obligated to embrace in regard to Trump.

Yet I am more then willing to concede that there is in fact such an argument. All I can do is to note that in fact "here and now" this argument has yet to be demonstrated to me.

that is the struggle right now..... how do we translate personal,
individual experiences into a universal understanding of what it means
to be human?

Here my reaction is to suggest that the truly hardcore objectivists among have long since abandoned this as a "struggle". Instead, in my view, in one or another rendition of this...

1] For one reason or another [rooted largely in dasein], you are taught or come into contact with [through your upbringing, a friend, a book, an experience etc.] a worldview, a philosophy of life.

2] Over time, you become convinced that this perspective expresses and encompasses the most rational and objective truth. This truth then becomes increasingly more vital, more essential to you as a foundation, a justification, a celebration of all that is moral as opposed to immoral, rational as opposed to irrational.

3] Eventually, for some, they begin to bump into others who feel the same way; they may even begin to actively seek out folks similarly inclined to view the world in a particular way.

4] Some begin to share this philosophy with family, friends, colleagues, associates, Internet denizens; increasingly it becomes more and more a part of their life. It becomes, in other words, more intertwined in their personal relationships with others...it begins to bind them emotionally and psychologically.

5] As yet more time passes, they start to feel increasingly compelled not only to share their Truth with others but, in turn, to vigorously defend it against any and all detractors as well.

6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity....on their very Self.

7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original philosophical quest for truth, for wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with philosophy at all. And certainly less and less to do with "logic".

...they have opted for the psychological comfort and consolation that their own objectivist narrative now allows them. They can anchor "I" not in a certainty that they are to demonstrate to others regarding their values, but that they are in fact certain their own moral narrative and political agenda reflects the optimal or the only rational way in which to think about conflicting goods.

Unless of course I'm wrong. And I don't mean that here in a facetious manner. I simply have no way in which to demonstrate myself that I am right.

Which is simply to note that I can't exclude myself from my own argument.

[Peter Kropotkin]

I am a big fan of jazz... I listen to a lot of jazz, (although of late,
I have been engaged with classical far more then Jazz)..
anyway, I don't listen to recent jazz... I listen to Miles Davis basically,
and one of my favorite albums is "Kind of Blue"....and for many, many
people, this is the greatest Jazz album of all time...and the best selling
jazz album of all time.... critics and many people believe that Davis is the
greatest Jazz musician of all time.... but, not everyone agrees...
there are some who will list John Coltrane as the best jazz musician of
all time and that the best album is Coltrane's "A love Supreme"...…

and there are some who say its it Dave Brubeck and the best album is
"Time out" and the song, "Take five" as the best Jazz song ever....

now how are we to best judge which music is the best, really is the best jazz
music?

how do we quantify which Jazz musician or the best album or the best jazz song?

what criteria should we use to judge what Jazz music or musician is the best?

Now comes the interesting part, I say that jazz is the greatest type of music
ever created, and some might agree and some, many won't agree...
and some will say, classical or rock or progressive rock or alternative rock
or country western... yuck...… is the best music ever created.....

how do we choose?

because the act of listening to music is subjective.. there simply isn't
any way for us to quantify the best music, genre or album or song or
musician..... so how do we make this judgement personally?

it isn't done on the logical, rational level... music appeals to the
irrational, emotional side of us...… and we judge our music
on irrational, emotional aspects.... if it moves us, it is great..
and if it doesn't move us, it isn't...…..

music appeals to that which is inside the soul... when I was young,
I listen to loud rock and roll.. that no longer appeals to my soul...
I am an old man... and the music that appeals to me, that moves my soul
is softer, gentler, quieter music...….although I still listen to "the Who"
and other 70's rock and I still listen to alternative music... but again, these
days, I mostly listen to new age music, classical and jazz music.....

but that decision isn't based upon logic or rationalism...
my decision is based purely upon irrationalism and emotion.....

now, I would suggest that much of our decision making process
is done exactly the same way as we choose our music.....

when I favor freedom over security/safety... I am making that decision based
upon what feels most comfortable to me, exactly like how I choose
my music upon... my decisions are done irrationally and emotionally....
freedom appeals to my soul much more then security/safety.....

and I would suggest that is how people make such decisions...
that it becomes more then just need based, it comes from
what we feel is right, not by logic or rationalism....

people become democrats and cheer for the SF giants baseball team
and march the streets for Row vs wade.. not because they are making
logical, rational choices, but because those causes are causes people
desire by irrationalism and emotionalism....

when I fight IQ45.. it isn't done by being rational or logical...
I fight IQ45 because I am against him, emotionally, irrationally...

and people who fight for the village idiot also fight because they
are making their decisions based upon emotions and irrationalism....

now we cannot, cannot escape us making many such decisions
emotionally or irrationally... we are human beings and we
make decisions emotionally and irrationally... that is the
instinctual, evolutionary aspect of being human.....

we still operate in decision making with instincts and
emotions developed over the last million years.....

but as I have noted before, as the society become more complex
and developed... we can no longer be so dependent upon our
instincts, our emotions to sway us into making our decisions for us.....

at what point does the switch need to be make where we begin to
make our decision from irrationally to rationally, from instinct/emotionally
to logical?

I say with the fate of the planet earth hanging in the balance,
perhaps now would be a good time to make our decisions logically,
rationally...…..

instead of basing our decisions upon our own personal needs and desires,
we begin to base our decision upon what is best for the continued survival
of the earth and the continued survival of the species called human beings.....

that we are dependent upon the other living creature that also exists
on planet earth cannot be denied, so we must also take into account
the continued existence of animals/plants/ tree's.. if we are to continue
our own existence...….

we think of existence in terms of the future, not in terms of the past or present.....

we make decisions based upon how it effects the future, not how it affects
the present or the past.....we can no longer afford to think like conservatives
and think solely of the past or the present...…

it is taking into account the future that will allow us to make less irrational
or emotional decisions.....

a good rule of the thumb is "we leave the earth in better shape then we found it"

and of course, the question arises, what is better?

better is simply, we leave more possibilities and opportunities to our children
and grandchildren.... we leave them with more choices and possibilities then we had....

so if we no longer drive animals or habitats into extinction, that allows our children
greater possibilities, greater opportunities.... when we use up resources or
cause the extinction of animals, we reduce choices/possibilities.....
if you can't use something because it is gone, it no longer becomes
a possibility... if I run out of gas in my car, I have lost the opportunity
to go somewhere.. I must refill my car with gas before I
can create new possibilities/opportunities...….

the greater the choices, the greater the possibilities....

and to become human, fully human we must understand
how important choices and possibilities are for human beings.....

so we no longer drive for the pursuit of happiness or of material
possessions or of greed or lust or anger or hate.... those
drives, those passion, those desires don't improve
the choices or possibilities we human have....

what is the role of human beings?

to engage with our choices and possibilities...…
and that is the pursuit we must follow..

not knowledge or wealth or titles or happiness or renunciation of desires....
or even achieving desires....

no, it is the creation of choices and possibilities that become
what it means to be human...………

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

let us put this idea of choices and possibilities into some
historical context because to really understand something
it needs to be put into some context...….

during the middle ages, medieval times,
the choices, the possibilities for people were
rather limited....

some have said this that there were three classes of people
in the middle ages....

those who prayed
those who worked
and those who fought.....

these were really the only possibilities for someone in the middle ages....
and the vast majority of people were in the "those who worked" category.....
the vast majority of human beings since around 10,000 BC have worked
in farming, agriculture.....in 2008, the UN predicted that half the world's
population would live in urban areas, not rural agricultural area's...…

thus from roughly 10,0000 to 2008, the world lived mostly
in rural agricultural area's farming or having something to do
with farming....those who worked....

and farming is farming and has been farming for over 10,000 years...
in farming, you have an engagement with the land, with the weather
with the seasons and the sun.... there is a time to plant and a time
to water and a time to harvest...… as a urban person, I find
rain to be a pest, a nuisance, a annoyance, a problem to my day to day
existence...…whereas to a farmer, rain is a vital and essential aspect
of farming... without rain, you don't have crops.. it is that simple....

although the technology of farming has increased since 10,000 years ago,
the principles are still the same... a farmer from 10,000 years ago would
understand what a farmer does today...…

this continuity of working, of being in a system that has gone on
for 10,000 years, means we had a system of engagement from
the farmers from past to present.....farming is farming is farming..
regardless of the technology being used...…

and the vast number of human beings engaged in farming, was pretty much
for centuries, was over 90% of all human beings alive..... if you lived,
you basically farmed.... and that is continuity that cannot be underestimated....

the other two branches of the middle ages were those who prayed and
those who fought.... and they were a small fraction of the population during
any given time.....while millions lived on the land farming, hundreds of thousands
lived in the cities or prayed or fought...….

think of the possibilities today.... the majority of Americans don't farm,
they live in urban area's....people don't have just three possibilities for them...
to work the land isn't much of a possibility any more and the number who pray
is small and growing smaller... and given we have a population of over 330 million
people, the number who are soldiers are less then 2 million people including
reserve forces...so less then one percent of our population is those who fight....
and if we include the number of policemen in our country, the number increase
to another 120,000.... that is still less then one percent of our entire population.....

the single largest number of people working today is in the service industry or
retail...…

in other words, we have far greater possibilities then the average person
did in the middle ages... and we have choices unimagined by the average
person in the middle ages.....

the average person in the middle ages had only one book available to them
and they couldn't even read it, the bible... personally, I own over
5000 books and I have read the majority of them.....my own reading possibilities
of the number of books I can read is so much larger then what was possible during
the middle ages.... the number of books that say, Thomas Jefferson owned was
roughly between 9 and 10 thousand books, in his entire lifetime....
that is the increase of possibilities that I am referring to.....
the number of books published each year is roughly around 2.2 million
books...….that is a lot of possibilities.....the number of books the U.S
publishes is over 300,000 a year.... I suspect that number will increase
over the years.....with each book is another choice, another possibility....

think about what all this means.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so, what does all this mean?

well, the beginning of the exodus from rural, agriculture area's, from
farming, began with the Industrial revolution or perhaps the French
revolution... they were happening at the same time......the beginning
of the modern age is when the west began to go from rural, agriculture
to the urban modern world...…

and what else happened? why the increase in the atomization of human
beings and the increase in alienation of human beings and the disconnect
we have from society and each other and ourselves...……

we can draw a straight map that leads from the alienation of
human beings from the reduction of rural/agriculture aspect of our lives....

we lost the continuity of human existence with the rise of the modern,
industrial world...… where we have little or no contact with what
farmers had for 10,000 years with the land and the seasons and weather
and the sun...…..we lost that...….

hence the rise of our disconnected lives.... can we return the genie into
the bottle?..... no, no we cannot...…

as profound as the change was from the hunter/gatherer mode of
existence, comes the next phase of human existence... from
the agricultural existence we have had for 10,000 years to our modern existence,
comes the next phase of existence...…. the change from agriculture to?

and this is the question that we must engage with...

we have had our first phase of existence, hunter/gatherer to the second phase,
rural agriculture to the third phase of... of whatever we are working toward
now...…..

and that is the problem...we aren't engaged with the next phase of our existence..
we are simply walking blindly into the future, hoping that it will all work out....

we must be actively engage with the next phase of human existence,
whatever it will be...…whatever we desire it to be...…

existence is about making choices and finding our possibilities....

so what our are choices, possibilities going into the future?

and which one shall we choose?

it is not a single, individual choice, it is a collective
and communal decision that we must make about our collective future.....

it is no longer about "what am I to do" but "what are we to do"
and it is no longer about, "what should I believe in" but the question
becomes, "what should we believe in" and the question is no longer
about "what values should I hold" but the question must change into
"what values should we hold to"...….

that is the next step..... to engage collectively, not just individually.....

Kropotkin