continuation of being reasonable thread

[Peter Kropotkin]

as noted before, this question of being "reasonable" vs
being "unreasonable" comes down to our childhood indoctrinations,
our education, our family, our society and/or state's values....

Depending on who is doing the counting, a statement such
as "there is a god" can be both reasonable or unreasonable...
and how are to know? What criteria can we use to judge such
statements?

We have but two ways to understand knowledge.... theory or
experience... we can define a Christian by how they understand
the theory of being Christian or we can judge them by their
actual practice of being Christian... we can judge them within
experience... the bible says, "Everyone is welcomed at God's party"
(luke 14:15-24) and within that saying, we can judge a Christian
by how closely they follow the bible... we can use experience to
judge a Christian... experience can be a way to judge people,
actions, events, beliefs...

I am a father.. and in raising my daughter, what has more use or value,
theory or experience... I can explain until the cows come home about
stoves and how hot they are and what might happen if she touches
the stove... but frankly until she touches a stove, experiences a stove
my daughter will not understand a stove and its dangers...

the fact is human beings learn from experiences far more than from theory...
education is experience based, not theory based...and what do experiences
tell us about ''reasonable'' and ''unreasonable'' people?...

Do we educate children to be ''reasonable'' or ''unreasonable'' and how we
judge that? One such criteria is getting with people... and as human beings
are social creatures, and that we must, must engage with other human beings
in order for us to survive, meet our needs, to find love, to procreate, to
become educated, to find happiness, in other words, we cannot become
human beings without the impact and influence of other human beings..

human being must, must engage with other human beings..
if there is a biological necessity, that is it, the human experience
is one where we must interact and engage with other human beings..
and the only way that works if people are "reasonable" with each other...
in other words, if we are difficult or demanding or narcissistic
we will create difficulties in our interactions with other human beings....

the key to success of being human lies in our working with and being part
of the human race... if we get along with, if we can communicate with,
if we can work with, if we want to survive, succeed, prosper as a human being,
we must be able to get along with other human beings... and much of
the human experience, means in a very real sense, that we must
"go with the flow"... to survive as a human being, we must be able
to get along with and work with other human beings.. the fact is,
to survive, we must be "reasonable" with other human beings...
to accommodate, to be understanding and become accustomed to
others..

thus experience demonstrates to us how we are to engage and act
with other human beings...not theory, but actual usage...
within real behaviors and actions with others...

experience is our guide into how we are to act and behave....
not theory...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

if we, through experience, understand that we can only
survive and prosper through a conflict free society, state,
civilization, then the promotion of order becomes
paramount... if we believe in freedom as the primary criteria
of a society/state, then we understand that within the
basis of freedom, that our society, state, culture will
be more disordered...for that is the nature of freedom,
in its practice, it becomes disordered... the act of freedom
encourages disorder...it is inherent within freedom...
and I know this from experience... we must balance the
human need for order, security with the human need for
freedom....and it is a balancing act..... and human beings
because of their inability to be balanced, have a hard time
trying to practice balance....
human beings hold to the middle and engage in a sort of balance,
by inaction, inertia, hold to the middle but rarely by a thoughtful
understanding of the middle, of balance...... we stay in the middle
by simple failing to do anything else.. it is rarely a choice, just simple
inaction..

we mindlessly go through life without any thought as to the
questions of existence, either the Kantian questions,
'What am I to do?" " What can I hope for?" ''What can I know?"
as well as the journalistic questions, the who, what, when,
where, how and why... within these 6 questions we can
engage with life and its questions...

which brings back to the theory or experience question...
by just simple experience, we gain some knowledge, but
to make sense of that experience, we must have some theory
of some sort...

a tree falls into a forest and no one is there....
does the tree make a sound?

but within this understanding, the tree falling, we can
actually engage with every aspect of philosophy...
Epistemology, logic, morality/ethics, metaphysics, Aesthetics,
political philosophy... but later.. football game is starting...

GO NINERS..

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

if we, through experience, understand that we can only
survive and prosper through a conflict free society, state,
civilization, then the promotion of order becomes
paramount... if we believe in freedom as the primary criteria
of a society/state, then we understand that within the
basis of freedom, that our society, state, culture will
be more disordered...for that is the nature of freedom,
in its practice, it becomes disordered... the act of freedom
encourages disorder...it is inherent within freedom...
and I know this from experience... we must balance the
human need for order, security with the human need for
freedom....and it is a balancing act..... and human beings
because of their inability to be balanced, have a hard time
trying to practice balance....
human beings hold to the middle and engage in a sort of balance,
by inaction, inertia, hold to the middle but rarely by a thoughtful
understanding of the middle, of balance...... we stay in the middle
by simple failing to do anything else.. it is rarely a choice, just simple
inaction..

we mindlessly go through life without any thought as to the
questions of existence, either the Kantian questions,
'What am I to do?" " What can I hope for?" ''What can I know?"
as well as the journalistic questions, the who, what, when,
where, how and why... within these 6 questions we can
engage with life and its questions...

which brings back to the theory or experience question...
by just simple experience, we gain some knowledge, but
to make sense of that experience, we must have some theory
of some sort...

a tree falls into a forest and no one is there....
does the tree make a sound?

but within this understanding, the tree falling, we can
actually engage with every aspect of philosophy...
Epistemology, logic, morality/ethics, metaphysics, Aesthetics,
political philosophy... but later.. football game is starting...

GO NINERS..

And the NINERS WON... sweet...

and I'm back..

so a tree falls in a forest, and if no one hears it,
did the tree fall?

This is an epistemology question because how can we be sure
the tree fell? What knowledge of the tree falling can we know?

and this is a Metaphysical question as we must ask, how did the
fallen tree get there?

It is a political question as what we are going to do to A. prevents
trees from falling and B. what is our collective response to the fallen
tree? Should we leave it, remove it, burn it? what sort of political/
collective responses should/could we make to our falling tree?

It is an Aesthetic problem as we have a two part aesthetic question,
one, was the tree falling, an act of beauty? and two, is the fallen tree
in the forest, with a black and white picture, is that beautiful?
I can see that mental image of a black and white picture of a fallen
tree, being quite beautiful...

it is a moral/ethical question... if the tree had no choice in falling,
is a falling tree ''right'' to fall or is the tree ''wrong'' for falling?
can we draw any moral/ethical implications from a tree falling in
a forest, with no one watching?
Does a falling tree have any responsibility for falling? Can it be held
accountable for falling?

What does a falling tree mean for us in a no-god universe,
as opposed to a tree falling in a universe with a god?
and which god should we take into account for that falling tree?
This is a religious understanding of that falling tree..

Now are these possible interpretations of falling tree, my only
possible interpretations? Not at all.. I could literally come
up with dozens of possible interpretations of that falling tree...
from a scientific standpoint to a metaphysical viewpoint to
a philosophical viewpoint to a social viewpoint to a political
viewpoint... all these possible viewpoints and far more can be
linked to a falling tree....

and that viewpoint can come from our childhood indoctrinations,
to our socio-economic status, to our education, to which country we
were born in and what year we are born in....and to what one might
call Dasein.. from our being...

the trick to working out the answer to our problem isn't from a lack
of possibilities, it is from our having to weed out the many diverse
possibilities.....

what does a tree falling in an empty forest mean to you?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we can even relate the falling of the tree to telos..
a goal or purpose, of both humans and the natural world
outside of humans

Kropotkin