a different take

[Peter Kropotkin]

Given the many revolutions of the modern age, the scientific, Industrial,
the political, the social, the economic, and the philosophical revolutions
that have transformed this world into the modern age...

each revolution has loosened the grip of an ideology or ism... and sometime
two or even three ism's were damaged during a particular revolution...
the political and social revolution of the French revolution for example,
remade France, from top to bottom... and France still hasn't recovered...

with each revolution some ism or another was severely damaged,
the Scientific Revolution for example damaged the old authorities of
philosophy such as Plato and Aristotle.. Galileo for example,
was part of the group that damaged Aristotle so badly, that
he couldn't never be considered a scientific authority again....
and thus, scientific authority shifted for the first time in over
a thousand years to Kepler, Galileo, Descartes and especially Newton...

the Industrial revolution remade the land... millions, due to a lack of jobs,
moved to the big industrial cities to find work... but in to some degree,
kept the old isms that existed from living on the land for a thousand years...
(which is part of the problem in America, we live in cities and the burbs, but
millions still have the ism/ideologies of living on the farm, agricultural
isms and ideologies that still dominate the GOP/MAGA party...Rural
America supports IQ45 because the old ism of agricultural America still
lives in America... that roughly 97% of the country's land mass is rural,
but only 19% live there...and urban areas, make up roughly 3% of
the land mass but account for over 80% of the population.....
the GOP/MAGA party survives on those who still believe in the old
agricultural ism's...of god, country and guns... (recall that
32% of Americans owns guns and the vast majority of those, 47%,
live in rural areas)

what the various revolutions have done, is take away, remove the
ism's and ideologies that dominated the world for centuries...
take the monarchy for example, before 1800, the vast majority
of countries were ruled by Monarchs... there are 43 countries in the world
that are ruled by monarchs today... as opposed to the number in 1800, in which
the vast number of countries were monarchies.. with a few exceptions..
the U.S being one... the political form of government known as the monarchy,
was the primary form of government since the establishment of governments...
maybe 10,000 years, and for the most part, it was wiped out in roughly
200 years.. that is a dramatic transformation in such a short time...
today people say that democracy is failing or has failed.. but think about
it, democracies as we know it, is only 250 years old, in America and vastly
younger in most countries... how can you claim something is a failure
given it has barely been around... in practical terms, 200 years in human
history is nothing, a drop in the bucket... we have been around for over a
million years.....and what is 200 years in all of that?

this is one effect of our many revolutions... our political understanding
has changed in light of the many revolutions... as has our economic
understanding, as our scientific, and social and philosophical understanding
have all changed given the number of revolutions in the last 500 years....

you have to understand our modern ways in terms of context...
that we have had many different revolutions in the last 500 years
that has dramatically changed how we approach the world.....
the modern isms that we abide by, are fairly new..
capitalism, nationalism, communism, democracies, Nazism, socialism,
were all created within the last 250 years... or since the French
Revolution... 234 years ago...

and as we human beings seem to have a problem keeping up with things...
we get new information, and it takes a while for that information to
become part of our mental structure... this lag is well known in
especially philosophy....as we have yet, philosophically, come to
terms with the modern scientific revolutions of relativity and quantum
mechanics.... we are still trying to work out what those scientific idea's
mean to us philosophically.....

and that is an important thing to note.. that ideas take time to
be assimilated in people...for example, we have yet,
morally/philosophically come to terms with nuclear weapons.....
and until we do that, we are at risk of blowing ourselves up....

and the final point I wish to make is that the newness of our isms
and ideologies, the destruction of the old ideologies, means that
we are still working out what isms and ideologies we need or want....
we have yet, settled down on a set of isms that we will use to
go into the future with... for example, the ism of Aristotle being
the authority in science lasted for centuries... and until it was no
longer possible to take Aristotle seriously as a scientist.. and we were
force to rethink science and what it means to us... and that transformation
lasted over a century...and even today, we still aren't sure what the role
of science is in our lives..... or the role of ism like capitalism and communism
and democracy.. and all the other recent isms that were created in the
last 200 years.....of those isms, which ism/isms are the ism that
we are going to go into the future with? we have no idea today....
we don't know which ism is going to be our future ism, upon which
we make our choices and decisions to....

this indecision is part and parcel of the world's problems....
which ism/isms are we going to continue with?
I can very easily see both capitalism and democracy collapsing
in a few years...and then what political/economic ism are we
going to abide by?

the questions we face are not about gender or sexual identities.. , or
or how much taxes we pay... but the much larger question of
what ism are we going to take into the future, to live by,
and die by? but I have a different solution... instead of isms
and ideologies, we try something new....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

now one of the problems with our modern isms is that
they devalue, dehumanize people and their values...
and that is how I define nihilism... the dehumanizing of
people and their values..... capitalism and communism
and nationalism and Nazism, all devalue and dehumanize
us......all examples of nihilism....

so, this new path of isms and ideologies have devalued us,
as foreseen by Nietzsche....he call the 19 century, ''the coming
century of Nihilism''...

and that is our question today, how do we escape this prior century,
nihilism? A nihilism that still infects us today...

and what is the path to escaping our current nihilism?
that is the question facing philosophy today....
how do we go from Nihilism to, whatever is next..
and therein lies part of the problem, what is the opposite
word of Nihilism? do we even have a word that is the opposite of
Nihilism? perhaps that is part of the problem itself?

more after lunch

Kropotkin