the modern state of affairs

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Peter Kropotkin
Posts: 1455
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:11 am

the modern state of affairs

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

in thinking about our modern world, one is faced with
two, distinct and separate visions of the world..

One such vision is the Romantic/illogical/ anti-reason/ emotions first/religious
belief in the universe... to be believe in the religious, is to ignore the physical
reality we see every day.....an excellent example of this Romantic/anti-reason
faith in the world are the MAGA believers.... they hold extreme, unrealistic,
viewpoints of the world... this idea of a "deep state" that is committed to
destroying IQ45 is an example of this anti-reason beliefs.. look at the beliefs
of the MAGA crowd and what do you see? Nothing resembling reason, logic,
or making sense... Don Quixote tilting at windmills makes more sense because
at least his windmills exist, unlike the MAGA crowd whose windmills only
exists in their heads...

but the rise of emotionalism and anti-rationalism dates back over 200 years with
the rise of Romanticism... the Nazi's ideals are deeply Romantic and anti-intellectual..
just as modern conservatism is Romantic and anti-rational/anti-intellectual...
The modern beliefs of the conservative is based on anti-intellectualism..
which party is trying to destroy the educational system, and fighting against
student loan forgiveness? Which party holds to such irrational beliefs such as
the ''deep state'' or conspiracies under every tree, or to the 2020 election
being ''stolen''... or that IQ45 can walk on water? Which party is openly
trying to turn America into a dictatorship? spoiler alert, the cult of trump...

and what is the second vision of America?
a vision where we engage with logic, reason, rationalism..
where we hold to beliefs based on facts, not on our gut or
our intuition.. where America is law based and we use science
and philosophy to make judgements, not irrationalism...

the real modern question lies in the use of experience... liberals hold
to experience as our guide, conservatives use such things as
"The will to power" or "might makes right"..... emotional,
illogical, irrational beliefs guide the conservatives...

conservatives cannot move forward, only backwards... notice the
Nazi's use of myths to recreate a past experience.. in other words,
the Nazi's held in the belief in the golden past.. and they must
recreate the past to achieve "greatness"... does this sound familiar?
MAGA or Make America Great Again.. not go into the future and create
a better future, but recreate a 'great" past.. achieve greatness by
recreating the past... this was the Nazi ideal, this is the conservative ideal
and this is the MAGA ideal....

I have little interest in the past because given how much the state/society/
science/philosophy/ culture has changed over the last 200 years, it is no
longer true that the ''Past is prologue" because of the massive changes in
our society, state, culture, science, history... how do we make "past is
prologue" given the events of the last 200 years... what events from before
1800 can give us prologue in reference to the Holocaust, the two World Wars,
the Atomic Bomb, the rise of the modern state, the rise of the bureaucracies,
the theory of evolution, of gravity, of relativity? the rise of technologies like
the cell phone and airplanes and computers? How does the past of a horse drawn
carriage give us insight into the modern highways and cars and the Indy 500?

Technology itself has driven the "past is prologue" into the dust..
how does the past prologue give us insight into TV's or computers
or electricity or telephones?

We have no past precedents into the current level of technology or science
or the skills/ technique of repairing a car or rebuilding an engine or flying a plane...
we cannot have " past is prologue" when there is no past precedents of
the technology or science or skills we have today...

my own Minium skill set of reading, writing, the modest ability to do math,
allows me to have a skill set far above the average person for the first million
years of being human.... the average person in history could not have been
able to read or write or do the math I can do.. how does "past is prologue" work
when I have skills that few human beings had before our modern times?

This inability to have "past is prologue" in our modern times, is in part,
part of the reason of the alienation and disconnect that is so apparent
in our modern age... thus we are unable to hold to the idea that the
"past is prologue" when the past doesn't offer us any guidance or
"prologue" as it were.. how can the past offer us any guidance when
there is no historical precedent for such modern events as the
holocaust or the Atomic Bomb? we are disconnected from the past because
of this inability to gain any guidance from the past.. hence the desperate
attempt of conservatives to hold onto god and other things from the past...
conservatives are trying to gain a foothold into something that
allows them to believe that ''past is prologue''...

our historical situation doesn't allow us access to this idea of
''past is prologue''...so what are we to hang our hats on? the past?
the present? or as we Liberals do, the future?

god is past, nations are past, hatred of jews, blacks, women,
people of color is past... and what is future? certainly nothing
from the past..... ''past is no longer prologue? now what?

Kropotkin
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