the third age of man....

[Peter Kropotkin]

I could have also made the subject line say this:
religion vs Philosophy... but given the overall perspective
I am going with, the third age of man seems to be a better fit....

as I have stated before, I believe us to be entering the third age of man...
the first age was the magical thinking of pre-history.... magical thinking
is where one is not concerned with cause and effect... when children
are playing and suddenly a dog might walk up next to them, and the child
might not notice, but that is natural to a child... things can magically
happen and the child just simply accepts as, magic.. there is no thinking
as to how that dog just ''appeared'' to them, its there...
or the idea of Christmas.. where presents magically appear in front of
a tree... there is no thought as to how this happened, a child couldn't
care less...it just magically appeared and that is good enough for them...

the two historical ages where magical thinking was dominant,
was the long-lasting hunter-gatherer age and the next age
which was the pastoral age...where human beings were moving about,
following the food around... the hunter-gatherer age was where we
followed the food around and we had no control over the food/animals...
the first age was the pastoral age where we followed the food around,
but we herded and cared for the food/animals...we had dogs that
herded the animals for us... think of the large sheep herds that still
exists today... where the animals were part of the tribes' possessions...

and this was the second age of man.... and the third age?
where we began to build cities and towns where we kept
the animals in pens or loose outside of the city and they
were regularly brought into town and sold as food....
the animals are now property of individuals... and we no
longer follow them, this second age no longer is the age of
magical thinking, this second age has become the theological age... 
where we can now see cause and effect... and because we don't have
a sense of the laws of nature, we turn to god or religion to
explain the cause and effect of existence.... a dog suddenly appears
and we can now think that god put that dog there.... it is no longer
magic that causes events to happen.. the crops failed and its because
we haven't prayed enough or sacrificed enough to appease the gods...
and by a means like sacrifice, we can change the cause and effect of
our daily lives....whereas in the earlier age of magic, we had no
such means to change the events around us.. because they were
magic, what is to be changed in a magical world and how can we
change it, given it was magic that cause events to happen.....
in a magical world, we have no control over events, they just happen..
whereas in a theological world, we have some sort of control
by our prayers, our sacrifices, our holy places... the rise of
priests and holy men come during the theological age

and the third age of man....the age of science... in which
we find that cause and effect have a natural basis...events
happen and there is a natural basis for those events....
cause and effect no longer are magical in nature nor
are they caused by a god/gods....
the tree falls down and we can think about it terms of
natural cause and effects.... we can say that ''entropy''
caused that tree to fall down...or gravity or some other
natural effect caused that tree to fall down...
it is irrelevant to pray or sacrifice anything to change the event
of the tree falling down.. we know why it fell down.... end of story...

the third age of man is a material, scientific age where
we understand cause and effect... but just as it took
many hundreds of years to go from the age of magic, to
the age of religion/theology... it will take a long time for
this next age to come into being, fully a part of our lives...

so just as the change in the last age, going from a pastoral age
to a theological age, created the many philosophers who
found themselves in the midst of a changing age...
the reason that so many philosophers and thinkers happened right
around the same time, from roughly 550 BC to roughly 400 BC, was
that they were part and parcel of understanding the change from
hunter-gatherer to pastoral to now cities and the agricultural
world that we are still part of...

think of the many philosophers who existed around this changing
world.. Socrates, Confucius, the Buddha, Zoroaster... and one has
to ask, what caused this sudden appearance of so many great thinkers
around the same time? I hold that they came in response to the
change in the world when it went from the pastoral age to
the new age of cities and agriculture... and the fact is that
in many circumstances, the old world still exists... we still have
pastoral communities in the world today...

with every change in the economics, which is what the hunter-gatherer
age was and the next age, the pastoral age was the second age...
going from magical thinking to theological thinking into our new age,
the third age of material/rational thinking...

we can explain the world in terms of science and logic and
material matters... and so given the last changing age brought
about those many philosophers/thinkers like Socrates and the Buddha
and Confucius... we can expect that we will have many new thinkers
and philosophers to explain, to make sense of the new world
of cause and effect... and suddenly, we can make sense of why
thinkers like Descartes and Locke and Hobbes and Spinoza
suddenly appeared.... they were the modern age version of
the old thinkers like Socrates and the Buddha...

thinkers who have tried to explain cause and effect that no longer
is done by magical thinking or theological thinking, but
by materialistic/material thinking....

and much of the last 200 years suddenly makes sense...
for these last 200 years has been a battle between those
who still believe in the ancient values of theological thinking
and the new wave, which is science and rational thinking...
cause and effect.....

and so, in this new age, we will get a whole lot of thinkers
who will generate new beliefs and new ways of thinking
and new values to match this new age of economics/science/
politics......the events occur.. capitalism, and then the thinkers/
philosophers take note and try to explain what that event/capitalism
had done or is doing or will do... philosophy is behind the events,
not during them or before them... but the explanations
of any event is done afterwards....for in magical thinking,
there is no cause and effect understanding, in theological
thinking there was a god or some other religious factor
that cause the event and now?

we can understand events in terms of material cause and effect..
that the laws of gravity cause an event or entropy or the law
of conservation... we can explain every single event that
happens in terms of some sort of science or rational thinking...
that is the new age....our age going into the future....
we no longer say, oh, god must have done that...
no, we no longer have the benefit of some theological
explanation of events, of cause and effects...

but then what does this mean for us?

next post...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

now we come to the part where we try to figure out what
it means that we no longer exist within a magical age or
the theological age?

we now live in a material age... think about this in terms of
burden.... in a magical age, there is no burden of cause and effects
on us.... things happen magically and that is that... we don't need
to wonder how or why something happened, it just did...

and under the next age, the theological age, we have the shifting
burden of existence.... cause and effect is now religious in nature...
the tree fell because god will it or that we didn't have enough food
because we weren't praying enough or build enough temples to the
gods....cause and effect is religious in nature... something to do
with the divine, with god....

and now we can no longer shift our burden of existence unto
a god or by magical thinking.... and event happens and we
must, in some fashion, conclude that event occurred by natural
events or even worse, by our own actions or inactions...

suddenly we can take on responsibility for events that happened..
for in the theological world, we can take indirect blame for actions..
by not being religious enough or not praying enough...
but in a materialistic world, where cause and effect has
to do with us, in some fashion, we didn't build the bridge that
fell well enough or we forgot to take into account some
material matter that caused some action...or something bad to
happen....responsibility for the world has shifted to us in some
ways or fashion...... and people hate being held accountable for
their actions... and in this modern world of cause and effect,
we must now take the blame for much of the world problems....
we cannot blame god or some magical event happening,
no, we ourselves have some blame in most actions or nonactions
as the case maybe...

in a theological world, we can blame god, who can we blame in
a materialistic world? the laws of physics? thermodynamics?
entropy? but they are know, set laws that don't change... we can
easily take them into account in our actions/thoughts....
if I try to jump over the ravine, I will fall down the ravine
because I know the law of gravity... I have no one to blame
outside of me, should I fall into the ravine for trying to jump it...
the burden of responsibility falls on me... and people hate
that.....in the new world, the burden of responsibility falls
on us now....

but here is where it gets tricky... that our materialistic world has
a flaw, actually, several flaws.... in our modern world,
we can now see how chance, randomness and chaos,
has impacted the world... let us say I try to go to the store
for groceries, and in a perfect world, I make it and I go shopping...
but in our world of chance and randomness, I maybe hit by another
car, or have a flat tire....we live in a world where chance and randomness
can impact our lives immensely... I am deaf today because of a random event
before I was even born.. a man will die today because of some random
event that happened to him....I can't tell you who, what, when, where
how or why, but I can tell you that some poor soul will die because
of some random, chance event today... there is no logic or rational
reason for that random event that will kill someone, but it is there....

our very existence is impacted in every way by randomness and
chance events... I have suggested that life itself came into
existence due to some random, chance event...

and to an extent, chance and randomness is built into our concept of
entropy.... the second law of thermodynamics says that
entropy ALWAYS increases with time.... but it doesn't say how
that entropy will take place... entropy is random, chaotic in its
nature... so in terms of cause and effect, we have first of all,
magical cause and effect, then we have religious cause and effect,
and now we have some rational, logical cause and effect, but
we also have random cause and effect...

if something doesn't happen the way we plan it, chances are
we had a random, chance event cause and effect that happened.....

we cannot plan for or understand how events are impacted by
our random, chance events, but that is how our universe works...
we live in a random, haphazard, volatility world... where chance
and randomness impacts and changes events in a way that we
cannot predict or expect...

the new philosophy of existence must take into account this chance,
random nature of our world....I decide to count to ten...
and some random event might happen that causes me to stop
my count to ten... I have no sense of what that event might be or
how it happened to me, but I might have a heart attack, I might
be hit by a meteorite...my daughter might interrupt my count...
a phone call, any number of random events could happen that will stop my
count to ten.....

cause and effect must now take into account randomness and chance....

that is the new universe.... the new age of man... our third age of man....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

but I can hear it now, but Kropotkin,
how can I get blame for the burden of existence
if events are dominated by chance or randomness?

and that is the modern question, how do we assign blame
or responsibility to someone if we accept this idea of
chance or randomness?

and that is my question to you...

in a random/chance universe, how do we blame or hold
responsibility for actions if the universe is random/full of chance?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and now we approach this slightly differently...

let us take the legal approach.... I am walking on your property
and I fall down, I can and most likely will take you to court...
for actions or nonactions taken.....

blame/responsibility is found in a court of law every single day..
and how is that possible in a world of chaos, randomness,
chance?

the legal standard is applied to those who own property...
blame and responsibility is tied into property ownership.....
legally anyway....and we tie that blame and responsibility into
local and/or statewide ''ownership'' the person who gets hurt
local or statewide property, can sue the local or state, for
being accountable or responsible for actions taken nor not taken...

but who exactly is the state or local entities being sued?
that is, who ''owns" the local or state entities?
the people do, at least that is the current theory of
state and local government.....

''We the people, in order to form a more perfect union......''

and on that basis, we can derive our legal and political rights
and responsibilities...

but to be honest, this idea that ''we the people'' is really nothing more
than a dubious fiction.. just like the idea of ''corporate'' has
anything more than a legal fiction.... it has no basis in reality
outside of a legal and political fiction.... the idea of the ''state''
and/or ''corporations'' have anything more than a legal or political
basis is wrong.... they are entirely a made up fictional, legal or  
political organizations....

or said another way, they only exist because we grant them existence...
legally and politically, the state and corporations only exist in terms
of being a legal or political reality.... the idea of the state/ or corporation
has no more basis in fact then the idea of god or religious ideals...
it has reality because we choose to give it reality...the idea of
the state/corporations only a mental basis for its existence....
we could just as easily end the state/corporations from our mental
aspect and erase them...because they have no other form of
existence outside of being a legal and/or a political entity...
with no basis in reality... I can think of a bear.. and it has mental
representation, but I can also go to a zoo and see a bear...
a physical being... a corporation only exists as an idea....
I can go to the local store and see it, but tomorrow, that
store or corporation may not be there...

or said another way, corporations and the state are mental
idea's, they are what the east calls "'maya" illusions....
nothing more than ''ad hoc'' idea's... ideas of the moment,
that has no lasting or long term value...to meet an
current need, but not a long term solution....

that is the state/corporations.... ''ad hoc"... that only
have reality as long as we give it reality.... once that reality
is taken away, so does the state/corporation reality is taken away...

this third age of man is an age of thinking of things being permanent
and real when they are just ''ad hoc'' images in the mind....

as the ages move on, they become more and more abstract..
we move from reality being right there and visible, to
belief in abstract ideas like the state and corporations....
ideas that are ''ad hoc'' of the moment...

just as belief in god goes from being real and visible to becoming more
and more abstract, to becoming an unseen, abstract spirit that we
bow down to today.... belief in god is just another ''ad hoc'' belief
that was needed at the time, but not needed anymore....

we can explain the universe in terms of the laws of nature...
of explaining the universe in terms of gravity and entropy
and thermodynamics.. among the laws by which we can explain
universe.....  we can explain the universe in material objects,
not just in terms of abstract ideas like god and state or corporations.....

the third age of man is where we can explain the universe in terms
of material laws like gravity and motion.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

lonthis coming into the third age of man, will take not just decades, but
centuries... as we move from the theological thinking into the
scientific, rational way of thinking.... and of the 4th age of man?

perhaps, perhaps it might be a union of the Romantic and
the Scientific ages.... there is room for a Romantic vision
of the universe and a scientific vision... and we can find
room to unite the two into a coherent understanding of
what it means to be human.... and that is really what the
ages of man mean... to find an understanding of what it  
means to be human.... the reality is that we human are not
defined as animals are, by instinct... that we have room to
move outside of and beyond our instincts.... we find ourselves
in terms of our internal movement of who we are and what is
possible for us..... as Nietzsche put it, we are on the road..
from being animal to being human....fully human...
and going from being all instincts, which is animal to
being animal/human in which we are partly governed
by instincts and we are partly driven by our choices..
which animals don't have which is choice... because
their instincts don't them choices... they must be a dog,
and nothing more because that is all their instincts allow
 them to do....

but we humans, we can choose to be more than just instincts..
we can choose to take a course of action, outside of or
beyond just mere instincts... we have choice...
and that freedom is beyond animals...

and the road to becoming fully human is the road of moving past
our instincts and making all our choices by our freedom of actions,
where we no longer use instincts to make our choices... we act
and believe outside of and beyond instincts...

and that is the road to becoming fully human... where we are no
longer about instincts and we are about making choices and
finding our possibilities... we no longer are driven by our instincts....
that is the path to becoming fully human....

that is the third age of man.... where we become human and exists
within our choices, not our instincts.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

let us shift gears a little bit....

and in this third age of man, what does it mean to ''sin?"'

in a no-god universe of the third age, how does ''sin'' even make sense?
''sin'' needs something to sin against, against whom is ''sin'' in a
no-god world? are you sinning against nature, humans, the state/society?
or is sinning a much more abstract thing.. like sinning against Karma
or Brahmin/atman?

to sin requires something to sin against... and in a no-god world, what
or who is that you are sinning against?

so, given there is nothing to sin against in a no-god world, I would
classify ''sin'' as ''maya'' an illusion......and does that become
''liberation''' as defined by Indian philosophy? where we are liberated from,
and one of the primary goals of Indian Philosophy is to become liberated,
to escape our suffering of rebirth, again and again being reborn....
of being liberated to become one with Brahman? the drop of water going
into an endless sea.. is that the liberation we are talking about?

I would suggest that image of our atman, soul, being ''liberated''
becoming a drop of water into Brahman, the endless sea, I would
consider that to be another example of ''maya'' an illusion.....

but Kropotkin, you are taking away all the mysteries of the universe...
yep... every single one of them.....we are not able to find
answers to all the questions, but those questions have the ability
to be answered if we pursue the questions long enough.. not
through god or sin or liberation, but in/through an understanding of
the natural universe... we live in a material universe and all
answers need to found within that materialism....
not in some abstract means like god or spirit or sin... but
in seeking out what is possible for us to achieve... be it
a philosopher or be it a runner or be it a teacher, or
a traveler.... our great goal in existence isn't to escape sin
or be at the right hand side of god, but to become who we are....

or as it is called in India... ''Tat Tvam Asi''' '''that thou art''

and within this possibility lay other goals, achievable and realistic goals....
to become moral, to become ethical...in a no-god universe, what
does it mean to be moral/ethical?

to allow, to help others reach their possibilities... to become who they are..
be it scientist or philosopher or thinker or one who lives for the beauty
of existence.... the sunset or the beauty of the mountains.. and yes,
even the beauty that exists within being moral and ethical.. there is
beauty even in being moral/ethical....

the biggest ''maya' or illusion we have, is that there is another to be searched
for.. be it god or sin or liberation or salvation.... we are who we are...
and that is enough... but that is often not enough... people want
difficulty and mystery in their lives..... those are also ''maya''
it is from the intangibles in life that creates our problems...
from not knowing how chance or the random nature of existence
will impact us...that is the true mystery of life... what random
event will change our life? isn't that mystery enough?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and in a no-god world, what does it mean to suffer?

I would suggest that suffering is not a sin nor is it something to
escape from... it is a part and parcel of life...
to exists is to be born, to be in pain, to grow old and to become
diseased and to finally die... that is part of the ticket of
existence.... and to deny or try to escape that is to escape
the part of our lives that, in many ways, makes us human...
I have learned things in the midst of suffering, it is one of,
if not the main way we human beings grow and become who we are...

I learn who I am through suffering... in my many illnesses and multiple
surgeries, I have learned who I am...and in my pain, I see what
it means to be human... and I learned...

suffering from those illnesses, growing old, being born, and expecting my
final demise, my own death, I have grown as a human being... every
single experience teaches me something... Nietzsche teaches us that....
and the experience of spinal surgery and having part of my colon removed,
has taught me something....and my ankle surgery of last year, taught me
something else....I have experience pain, very real, very powerful pain
and I have learned I can survive pain, physical pain.. and I have learned
I can survive emotional and psychological pain too... the pain of existence
isn't something to be liberated from, it is something to learn from....
it isn't a sin, but a gift.. a hard won and many times, a very ugly lesson....

but today, I am on the other side of my many surgeries..
and should my doctor tell me, Kropotkin, you need another
surgery, ok, I have survived and learned from other surgeries,
I will survive and learn from this surgery.... there is no need
to panic because it will become just another way to learn....

as is the ''suffering'' of existence is just another means to learn....

I grow old and I have disease and at some point, I will die...
and so what? It is the natural way of life... as I am everyone,
everyone who does grow old and everyone who suffers
and everyone who gets a disease and finally dies...

I say, welcome to the passage of existence... we all share and
go through this passage of growing old and getting diseased
and ''suffering'' until death finally get us too... and that is ok...
death is just another passage of existence... something to learn from..

why be afraid or fearful of death when it will happen and it will
happen to everyone.. including me and including you.... it is
just another aspect of our existence....

and thus we see the third age of man as being able to accept
and face the ''suffering'' of existence... old age, diseases,
the pang of existence... it is just another day at the office...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and now to tie in what I say with current events...
the mass murder in Maine... and where is the ''maya''
or illusion that lies in the act of gun violence?

that gun violence can be contained and even removed...
that is a fact... not speculation or wishful thinking..
we can end gun violence by the end of the year...

but we are faced with an illusion.. a longstanding illusion...
and the best way to describe this illusion is by noting
that children have teddy bears... and why? because the
teddy bear gives the illusion of safety and security to a child...
I owned a teddy bear for years as a child.. until one day, I was
about 15 or so, and it finally fell apart... and today, at 64,
I own several teddy bears... my wife won't let me put the bears
on the bed, but I have them in my corner of the room...
and owning a teddy bear gives one comfort and warm
and a safe feeling....

and for those who own guns, they operate exactly like teddy bears...
they give one a sense of safety and security.. and they have
as much protection as a teddy bear against the issues of the world....

want an example? Last year, in the Uvalde shooting, the police,
with all training and weapons, still took over an hour before they
went into the room where the gunman was... over an hour...
they didn't feel safe and all warm about having a gun..
they were fearful even with guns.. why do you think it
took them over an hour before they went into the room?

a gun has all the possibility of protecting someone as does a
teddy bear.... instead of having guns, you may as well get a
teddy bear.. it will leave you with the exact same feelings of
warm and safety as a gun...

the path to ending gun violence is to end the guns.... but people
are hooked into their feeling of their guns/teddy bears....
think about how the right wing reacts every time someone
even suggests removing guns from society... they scream
and cry like a 3 year old.. remove their teddy bear/guns?
what will make them feel safe and secure if their teddy bears/guns
are removed? people who scream for and demand guns.. are really
people who are in desperate need of a teddy bear...

and in the third age of man, we remove all illusions like the need for
guns.. for a gun is just another illusion that it can protect someone
from danger...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and within the third age of man, we begin to lose many if not
all of our illusions... in fact, ''maya'' is the heart of the human experience
and we need to remove them to begin to live our lives... of the many
''maya" or illusions we need to remove is in no particular order....

the idea of god, of salvation, of the alleged superiority of one set of
human beings over another set..(whites are superior to blacks is one
example of illusion) and we even need to overcome the illusions of facts...
for example, I say, I have three dollars in my hand... that is a fact, but
it is a provisional fact.. that three dollars may increase to $5.00 or it
may decrease to nothing.....most of what we hold as ''facts" are really
just provisional facts... facts that change depending on the moment...
another ''fact'' is that the earth is 93 million miles from the sun, but
once again, that is a provisional fact... the earth does not rotate around
the sun in an absolute circle...the earth rotation around the sun is an ellipse...
so, at times, the earth is 92 million miles from the sun and at other times,
it is 94 million miles from the sun...

Therefore this fact, the distance between the earth and sun, changes, it is
provisional... and the question of facts is that most facts fall into
being provisional... I have three dollars in my hand.. is provisional...
I am married, can and does change... of the moment... most facts
are ''ad hoc".. or of the moment...Darwin ''created'' the theory of
evolution.. but we have change aspects of his theory, the theory
evolution is provisional because it can and has changed over the years...
the theory of gravity is the one that most likely will change over
the next hundred years...we really don't understand gravity,
mostly because we don't have all the facts about gravity....
enough provisional facts and we can narrow down our ideas or
theories about something, but we cannot reach the ''truth'' of facts
due to the nature of facts...

the question of god's existence quite often comes down to this
question of revelation... it was revealed to someone that
god does this or wants that or that god even exists...

of the many ways to knowledge, to provisional facts, revelation is
about the worst way... it means we have to assume that several things
for us to think that revelation is true..... (and this is true of all
communication) we have a sender of a message, we have a message,
and we have a receiver of the message... all communication requires
these three things... you need a sender of all communication...
and in this case, our sender is god... and he has a message,
and we have a receiver.... and as anyone who has delt with
communication knows, communications can fail at any one of
these three points... the sender could be sending a different
message then they intend... or be sending a garbled message..
and the message itself could be misleading or just wrong..
and the receiver could mishear or misunderstand the message...
at any part of this communication, the communication could fail...

as a deaf person, I mishear verbal communication all the time...
that is why I am very attuned to communication...

the question of there being a god, requires some facts and facts
as we have established, are quite often provisional....and the
there are no facts or evidence at this time, to prove that a god
exists..... that is an illusion that we need to remove from who we are.....

the problem with most people, in fact, I would say, over 95% of the time,
is that these illusions exists because they make people feel better about
themselves... god is an illusion designed to make us feel better about
ourselves...to give us a sense of purpose and meaning... but, but
what if there is no god.... now what?

and that has been the question philosophers have been dealing with
since Nietzsche... whose goal was to create a morality that wasn't
the laws of god... how do we have morals and ethics in a no-god world?
that was the basic idea of Nietzsche...and every major philosopher
for decades worked on that idea... from Wittgenstein, who called
himself an ethical philosopher...to Sartre and Heidegger, who both
tried to work out an ethical/moral theory of human beings......
(but don't let anyone fool you, Heidegger was a religious philosopher
his book "Being and Time" was a religious tract...for ''being'' had
all the attributes of god, but just wasn't name that)

for the most part, most philosophers today have walked away from questions
of morals and ethics...but we don't have that luxury.. the collapse
of our modern day is, in large part, due to the loss of ethics/morals
in a no-god world....

the message of yesterday's god will not suffice in our modern day world...
given we have overpopulation and climate change and pollution,
to name a few of the problems we have today.... ''to be fruitful and multiply"
is no longer a message that we can have in our overcrowded world..
basically, the number of people we have on earth is unsustainable....

and the millions of people who are woefully underfed will increase from
hundreds of millions to billions of people.. and the crisis of starvation
will dramatically increase in the world...and millions of people
scrambling around the globe for food, will undermine the stability
and security of the world as is.....

and the fact that we have currently millions who are undernourished
is a provisional fact, as it will increase...

and the illusion here is that we can somehow, by science or god or
a miracle, that we can continue to feed billions of people on
earth...we take that on faith... and faith is a fickle bitch...

and given that we have a myriad set of problems, how do we know
which problems should be given priority?

the fundamental fact of existence is that living creatures have
needs, of food, water, shelter, education, health care.. are all
basic human needs.. and that is where we start...
we begin by meeting the biological needs of human beings....
to feed people, to house people, to get them water that is drinkable
and fresh... fulfill the basic needs of people is where we start...

ethics and morals are for those who have food and water and shelter...
one can afford to be ethical and moral when one has food and water....

we have lost the attempt to discover what it means to be moral
and ethical... and what will it take to recover that?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

the next question, is why have we lost our way?
why have we lost our moral and ethical center?

In one sense, we have been enamored with other illusions
that have lead us in the wrong direction...
our faith in the trinkets of existence, our faith in
the modern illusions of wealth, power, fame, titles,
and material possessions...the modern illusions
has steer us into going the wrong direction....how
can we find the time to seek out the ''true''
ethics and morals, if we are too busy seeking out the trinkets
of existence... if our spending our time seeking out
wealth or titles or fame, when do have the time to
think about the other illusions or think about morals and ethics...
the ''rat race'' has so consumed us, that we forget that there
are other, much more important questions for us to engage with....

but Kropotkin, you are not making any sense, you say one thing
and then say another thing and then say something altogether
different... but the fault lies in the world... there are many,
diverse moving parts in the world, and trying to hang on to
one small aspect is to ignore all the other aspects...
to focus on global warming, a very important aspect of the world
today, is however to ignore other, just as significant problems
of our modern day world... and an ''ad hoc'' solution to one problem,
usually, usually create adverse problems elsewhere...

I recall a story I once heard... a man with cancer happened to break his
arm...the surgeon who fixed his arm, was very pleased with his work
and told the man his arm was doing great, meanwhile, the man was
dying and the surgeon was so fixated on the broken arm, he never
noticed the man was dying... and we are that surgeon who is fixated
on the broken arm and never noticing the dying patient...

we are fixated on the illusions of money, fame, titles, power,
material possessions..... and we cannot see all the other aspects
existence... morals/ethics is neglected because of our focus on
the trinkets of existence... finding out our ''truths'' is neglected
because we are so focused on the trinkets of existence...
seeking out our possibilities, neglected... becoming who we are,
neglected... what are you so focused on that you have neglected
your search for ''truths'' to believe in? Your search for what is
moral and ethical is lost because of your focus elsewhere...
for what it means to be human and all that is, is lost
because of your focus on the trinkets of existence....

or said another way, we have lost our way because of our focus
on the illusions of our modern day world....and not focusing on
what is real and true....

Kropotkin