by Peter Kropotkin » Fri Oct 25, 2019 8:33 pm
what I am about to write will be three and distinct topics, but
ask yourself if they are three distinct and separate topics?
ask yourself, what is my relationship with these "three distinct"
and different topics...…
ask yourself, what do I know or think about these three topics?
engage with yourself about these three topics and see if you can
discover what they "mean" to you....
PAST
PAST: 1: gone by or elapsed in time.... 2. of, having existed in or having
occurred during a time previous to the present.. bygone....
3. gone by, just before the present time, just passed.....
things, events, people, institutions all exist in time, and they
exist within the past... they have existed but sometimes, no longer exists....
the Roman senate at one time existed, but no longer exists..... Martin Luther at one
time existed but he no longer exists, the America civil war once existed but it
no longer exists.... stone age houses once existed but no longer exists.....
we have examples of things, events, people and institutions that once
existed but no longer exists... this list by no means can be exhausted
in our description of no longer existing things, events, people or institutions....
How could we think of the past? we might use an analogy of the moving
sidewalk we see in airports....the moving sidewalk takes us from one part
of an airport to another side.. let us think of the moving sidewalk as
going from past to present to future...at one point in time, I was born...
I was placed on the moving sidewalk...at the time of my moving onto
the moving sidewalk, it was, for me, the present....I was born in time....
at a particular place and time, to a particular family with a father and mother
and sister....later in time, that family would dramatically change... it would
no longer have a father but it would gain additional members.. in several births
after me....in time, I would have 3 sisters and one brother... but all that is in the
"future" for me.....when I was born, I was born into a particular situation...onto
a moving sidewalk as it were...going from past to present to future....
the "present" I was born into had certain people, things, events, institutions
that existed at that particular place and time...but I was just born....
I had no knowledge of those people, events, time, things, institutions.....
I was on the moving sidewalk with everyone else but because of the time
of my particular birth, I had no knowledge of past, present or future....
I had no say or voice in the events, people, things or institutions of that time
and place..... things just happened... I had no knowledge of the who, what, when,
where, why or how of anything....I didn't even know I was on a moving sidewalk we
call time....movement/distance is time.. a basic point of Einstein....
as we move, we travel not only distance, but in time.....but as I now know,
if everyone is moving at the same speed, then it looks like we are not moving
or we are moving at one constant speed which means standing still....
but that is not true...…
as we "grow" up, we change and the world around us changes...
distance equals time...but sometimes it looks like there is change...
for example, during World War 2... some people didn't change in any,
way, shape or form...their lives remained the exact same from before the war,
during the war and after the war... but millions of people were impacted
directly by World war 2...but I wasn't born yet, and yet because of my mother
direct impact by World War 2, I was indirectly impacted... I was born 14 years
after World War 2... December 7 was a day to remember during my youth..
it was felt by everyone because it was a day that occurred 18 years earlier....
millions of people who were alive in 1959 were adults and they had lived through
the events of Pearl Harbor....my mom was a child in 1941.. and she distinctly remembers
that day....
the movement of us as individuals, and the movement of us
collectively, as members of the state/society/culture does not
coincide.... events that occur like Pearl harbor may or may not impact
me individually... me specifically because I did not exist during Pearl Harbor,
it was past for me....and the society/state/the culture that did exist during
the event of Pearl Harbor...the society/state/culture and me, we
travel at different speeds..... just as we individually move at different
speeds, we collectively move at different speeds and recall, speed/distance
is time.... we cannot separate out speed/distance and time....
we can think of this difference in speed between the individual and
the society/state/culture as being the idea of alienation, of disconnect,
of discontentment between the individual and society/state/culture....
so if we travel at different speeds due to our current situation, then
we experience time and events and people differently.....
I experience events and people and situations differently then
you do because we are at different points in our life, we are traveling
at different speeds.... I am old and old people just don't travel/move that
fast....whereas the young, they move and travel very fast or not, they have
a possibility that I do not have... I cannot choose to travel very fast anymore...
I just can't do that.... at one time, I could run a mile in 5 minutes.. past...
but in the present, it is no longer possible.. I don't even think I could run
a mile anymore and if I could, it certainly wouldn't be 5 minutes, maybe
20 minutes at best...if I'm lucky....so time passes differently for each of us...
depending upon our age.... which is a measurement of time.. which is another
word for distance... I have travel a certain amount of distance to get
to my age.....so I cannot travel as fast as the young people.. my distance
has slowed me down and as I age/distance, I shall become ever slower...
until one day, I shall stop moving.. my time will end and I shall be no more....
Present ....
Kropotkin
PK IS EVIL.....