knowing and doing....

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Peter Kropotkin
Posts: 1505
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:11 am

knowing and doing....

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

(I have been sick with Covid for two weeks, I am finally
healthy enough to write again, been a tough stretch)

It has been speculated for quite a while, that there
are two forces in the world, Knowing and doing.... or
as been suggested, Hebraism vs Hellenism...
Athens vs Jerusalem is another term for it...
in any case, this notion has been around for over a century
and today still explains a lot....Hebraism is concerned with
practice and Hellenism is concerned with knowledge...and we
can see this in our modern political world.... the modern conservative
is focused on practice and the liberal is focused on knowledge....
disagree, ask yourself who is attempting to destroy public education
in America today? it isn't the liberal.....IQ45 spent 4 years trying to destroy
the public education system with an education secretary who publicly
admitted that is what they were trying to do...

conservatives have been accusing liberals of "having their head in the clouds"
and ignoring the practice/real life examples that life gives us....and
dozens of examples can be shown to inform us of the conservatives
dislike of knowledge/Athens......( and what of the bigotry that
conservative brings to the table with their antisemitism? simple
failure to understand the Jewish engagement with practice)

but I like to point out that we must have, need both sides of this equation..
we must have practice and we must have knowledge...
think of having surgery with a surgeon who has no knowledge of
the body part being repaired... I had surgery several months ago and
I want a surgeon who has the knowledge of anatomy and has
practiced that surgery... but the medical profession has the right order,
knowledge first, and then practice.... and as we can practice,
we can then inform our knowledge... real life corrects our knowledge
of things... for example, as a retail clerk, I am very practiced with
the cash register, but for someone new, the training they receive
on the computer, as to how to ring up someone, is woefully inadequate
and completely fails to inform the new checker how to ring up someone...
the knowledge given by computer training for checking, is woefully inadequate..
it is only by actual checking can someone understand how to check out someone....
the actual checking informs the new checker as to their knowledge of checking
is inadequate... the practice/ the doing informs us to our knowledge of the
situation.... as the knowledge that we learn in school as to how America
is a democracy and a republic, is informed by the actual practice of
America not being a democracy and not being a republic, America today
is currently a corporatocracy...

Corporatocracy: a society or system that is ruled or governed by corporations....

and as soon as we act upon this new understanding, the better off we will be.....
our knowledge will be informed by the practice of reality....

so the path we follow is this, we have knowledge, and then we have practice,
and the practice informs the knowledge and the new knowledge informs the
practice and they bounce off of each other, going from practice to knowledge
and back again.. knowledge/theory informs practice/experience and
and practice/experience informs knowledge/theory....and this never ending
dance, we use all our lives....

and now we come to the interesting part.... in our youth, we are taught,
educated, informed of the theory/the knowledge of what is to come..
and as we grow older, we use theory/knowledge less and less and we
turn to experience more and more....the older one gets, the less one
is going to turn to knowledge/theory... I have a lifetime of experience,
which means I am not dependent on knowledge/theory...............

so, when a young person say, this knowledge/theory is right, I have
a vast amount of experience to inform me what that theory/knowledge
is worth....and I can, because of experience, see that information to
be true or false... so when a young person babbles on about conspiracies
and such, I can tell by experience, that conspiracies by their very nature
can't exist.... the so called "deep state" or the "stolen election" MAGA
conspiracies aren't possible given the sheer number of people needed
to make them work and it is only by experience can I tell that...
are their conspiracies, of course, that is only natural, but the extent
of that conspiracy is limited by the sheer number of people needed
to make them work...a conspiracy that needs millions of people of
people are far less likely than a conspiracy of thousands of people and
conspiracy of hundreds of people is a more likely than thousands or millions of people
but even then, hundreds of people conspiracy is less likely than a conspiracy
dozens of people... but given the nature of most conspiracies, most
conspiracies require thousands of people to work..

Which is a very long way of saying, with every person added to a practice,
getting people to act in a certain way, the more the people involved, the less
likely change will occur... where you might get hundreds of people to change,
you are less likely to get thousands of people to change and less likely
to get millions of people to change...the more people involved,
the less likely you are to get any action taken...or said another way,
the principle of entropy tells us that the more mass an object has,
the more energy it takes to move that object...the amount of energy
to move a rock is far less than to move a mountain.... and millions of people,
that is a mountain to move.... and so, how do we move mountains/people?

and that is the modern question? how do we engage enough people to
move them into action? and a question that is hard to imagine as
a young person.... it seems easy enough to move the masses into action,
but the energy to move hundreds of people into action is less than
it takes to move thousands of people into action and less than to
move millions of people into action.....

now one might say, but Kropotkin, this is all known and obvious,
but is it? the bigger the object, the greater the energy to move it....
and how do we move millions of people into action?
what energy do we have to get them to move?

in the last 200 years, we have seen movements like communism and
nationalism, be created and moved by the mass energy of
millions of people... and so we know that it is possible to move millions of people
into action, but how do we move millions into action today
and what goal/possibility can move those millions?

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Posts: 1505
Joined: Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:11 am

Re: knowing and doing....

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

and in doing/knowing, how do we "know"
what is the right thing to do?

That is the point of wisdom... to separate the wheat from the chaff,
as it were...

we can easily deduce some things outright, for example, we
can state that most people are decent, good, trying to do the right thing..
and how can we know this? simple, society/ the state works...
if people were evil, wrong, bad, the society/ the state would fail,
we would have Hobbes "state of nature" otherwise...
if people were as flawed as claimed, our society/state would not
work....if say, 20% of the population were as evil/flawed as claimed,
the state/society would fail... and that it all it takes for a state/society
to fail.. just 20% of the population to be "evil" and a state/society collapses...
but Kropotkin, why 20%? think of the number of people in jail/prison right now...
that number is around 2 million... of a population of 330 million people...
less than 1% of the population is in jail/prison... 33 million is roughly
10% of the population and 60 million is roughly 20% of the population...
the numbers alone suggest that most people are good, decent, honest
people....who are trying to do the right thing.... and what we must
do, lead by example... show people that the right thing to do is the
right thing to do..... and we can lead by both knowing and by doing.....
lay out the theory, the knowledge of what is the right thing to do
and then leading by example in doing the right thing...
which is why, one of the many reasons, why Biden is a much
better president than IQ45.... he is leading by example, doing the right
thing....

it is not enough to know the right thing to do, we must also
act upon that right thing... doing is as important as theory.....
and that is what Nietzsche was doing... creating a moral theory in which
he was trying to find a morality that wasn't dependent on god or religion....
a task that most philosophers of the 20th century tried.. and failed I might add...

so the real task facing us "philosophers" today is to create a moral/ethical
theory which can be back up by experience and isn't dependent on
god or religion....

we do have a question/problem facing us "moderns"... what
is a moral/ethical theory life today in our modern world?
and how do we practice, experience that moral/ethical theory?

Kropotkin
Age
Posts: 20198
Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:17 am

Re: knowing and doing....

Post by Age »

Peter Kropotkin wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 4:59 pm (I have been sick with Covid for two weeks, I am finally
healthy enough to write again, been a tough stretch)
HOW, EXACTLY, could one be so-called 'sick' to NOT be just able to write on a computer?
Peter Kropotkin wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 4:59 pm It has been speculated for quite a while, that there
are two forces in the world, Knowing and doing....
HOW, EXACTLY, are either or both of these 'things' so-called 'forces'?
Peter Kropotkin wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 4:59 pm or
as been suggested, Hebraism vs Hellenism...
Athens vs Jerusalem is another term for it...
in any case, this notion has been around for over a century
and today still explains a lot....Hebraism is concerned with
practice and Hellenism is concerned with knowledge...and we
can see this in our modern political world.... the modern conservative
is focused on practice and the liberal is focused on knowledge....
disagree, ask yourself who is attempting to destroy public education
in America today? it isn't the liberal.....IQ45 spent 4 years trying to destroy
the public education system with an education secretary who publicly
admitted that is what they were trying to do...
WHY do 'your' posts here REVOLVE AROUND the politics in just one very tiny and very insignificant country on this planet, and, IN REGARDS TO just 'your' OWN ONE-SIDED VIEW about which one of just two-sides of politics 'you' LOVE and ADMIRE?
Peter Kropotkin wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 4:59 pm conservatives have been accusing liberals of "having their head in the clouds"
and ignoring the practice/real life examples that life gives us....and
dozens of examples can be shown to inform us of the conservatives
dislike of knowledge/Athens......( and what of the bigotry that
conservative brings to the table with their antisemitism? simple
failure to understand the Jewish engagement with practice)

but I like to point out that we must have, need both sides of this equation..
we must have practice and we must have knowledge...
think of having surgery with a surgeon who has no knowledge of
the body part being repaired... I had surgery several months ago and
I want a surgeon who has the knowledge of anatomy and has
practiced that surgery... but the medical profession has the right order,
knowledge first, and then practice.... and as we can practice,
we can then inform our knowledge... real life corrects our knowledge
of things... for example, as a retail clerk, I am very practiced with
the cash register, but for someone new, the training they receive
on the computer, as to how to ring up someone, is woefully inadequate
and completely fails to inform the new checker how to ring up someone...
the knowledge given by computer training for checking, is woefully inadequate..
it is only by actual checking can someone understand how to check out someone....
the actual checking informs the new checker as to their knowledge of checking
is inadequate... the practice/ the doing informs us to our knowledge of the
situation.... as the knowledge that we learn in school as to how America
is a democracy and a republic, is informed by the actual practice of
America not being a democracy and not being a republic, America today
is currently a corporatocracy...

Corporatocracy: a society or system that is ruled or governed by corporations....

and as soon as we act upon this new understanding, the better off we will be.....
our knowledge will be informed by the practice of reality....

so the path we follow is this, we have knowledge, and then we have practice,
and the practice informs the knowledge and the new knowledge informs the
practice and they bounce off of each other, going from practice to knowledge
and back again.. knowledge/theory informs practice/experience and
and practice/experience informs knowledge/theory....and this never ending
dance, we use all our lives....

and now we come to the interesting part.... in our youth, we are taught,
educated, informed of the theory/the knowledge of what is to come..
and as we grow older, we use theory/knowledge less and less and we
turn to experience more and more....the older one gets, the less one
is going to turn to knowledge/theory... I have a lifetime of experience,
which means I am not dependent on knowledge/theory...............

so, when a young person say, this knowledge/theory is right, I have
a vast amount of experience to inform me what that theory/knowledge
is worth....and I can, because of experience, see that information to
be true or false... so when a young person babbles on about conspiracies
and such, I can tell by experience, that conspiracies by their very nature
can't exist.... the so called "deep state" or the "stolen election" MAGA
conspiracies aren't possible given the sheer number of people needed
to make them work and it is only by experience can I tell that...
are their conspiracies, of course, that is only natural, but the extent
of that conspiracy is limited by the sheer number of people needed
to make them work...a conspiracy that needs millions of people of
people are far less likely than a conspiracy of thousands of people and
conspiracy of hundreds of people is a more likely than thousands or millions of people
but even then, hundreds of people conspiracy is less likely than a conspiracy
dozens of people... but given the nature of most conspiracies, most
conspiracies require thousands of people to work..

Which is a very long way of saying, with every person added to a practice,
getting people to act in a certain way, the more the people involved, the less
likely change will occur... where you might get hundreds of people to change,
you are less likely to get thousands of people to change and less likely
to get millions of people to change...the more people involved,
the less likely you are to get any action taken...or said another way,
the principle of entropy tells us that the more mass an object has,
the more energy it takes to move that object...the amount of energy
to move a rock is far less than to move a mountain.... and millions of people,
that is a mountain to move.... and so, how do we move mountains/people?

and that is the modern question? how do we engage enough people to
move them into action? and a question that is hard to imagine as
a young person.... it seems easy enough to move the masses into action,
but the energy to move hundreds of people into action is less than
it takes to move thousands of people into action and less than to
move millions of people into action.....

now one might say, but Kropotkin, this is all known and obvious,
but is it? the bigger the object, the greater the energy to move it....
and how do we move millions of people into action?
what energy do we have to get them to move?

in the last 200 years, we have seen movements like communism and
nationalism, be created and moved by the mass energy of
millions of people... and so we know that it is possible to move millions of people
into action, but how do we move millions into action today
and what goal/possibility can move those millions?

Kropotkin
Age
Posts: 20198
Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:17 am

Re: knowing and doing....

Post by Age »

Peter Kropotkin wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 5:31 pm and in doing/knowing, how do we "know"
what is the right thing to do?
The Right thing to do in Life are ONLY 'that' in which EVERY one could be IN AGREEMENT WITH and ACCEPT.

FOLLOW THIS, and 'you' could NEVER go Wrong, in Life.
Peter Kropotkin wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 5:31 pm That is the point of wisdom... to separate the wheat from the chaff,
as it were...

we can easily deduce some things outright, for example, we
can state that most people are decent, good, trying to do the right thing..
and how can we know this? simple, society/ the state works...
if people were evil, wrong, bad, the society/ the state would fail,
we would have Hobbes "state of nature" otherwise...
if people were as flawed as claimed, our society/state would not
work....if say, 20% of the population were as evil/flawed as claimed,
the state/society would fail... and that it all it takes for a state/society
to fail.. just 20% of the population to be "evil" and a state/society collapses...
but Kropotkin, why 20%? think of the number of people in jail/prison right now...
that number is around 2 million... of a population of 330 million people...
less than 1% of the population is in jail/prison... 33 million is roughly
10% of the population and 60 million is roughly 20% of the population...
the numbers alone suggest that most people are good, decent, honest
people....who are trying to do the right thing.... and what we must
do, lead by example... show people that the right thing to do is the
right thing to do..... and we can lead by both knowing and by doing.....
lay out the theory, the knowledge of what is the right thing to do
and then leading by example in doing the right thing...
which is why, one of the many reasons, why Biden is a much
better president than IQ45.... he is leading by example, doing the right
thing....

it is not enough to know the right thing to do, we must also
act upon that right thing... doing is as important as theory.....
and that is what Nietzsche was doing... creating a moral theory in which
he was trying to find a morality that wasn't dependent on god or religion....
a task that most philosophers of the 20th century tried.. and failed I might add...

so the real task facing us "philosophers" today is to create a moral/ethical
theory which can be back up by experience and isn't dependent on
god or religion....

we do have a question/problem facing us "moderns"... what
is a moral/ethical theory life today in our modern world?
and how do we practice, experience that moral/ethical theory?

Kropotkin
Walker
Posts: 14280
Joined: Thu Nov 05, 2015 12:00 am

Re: knowing and doing....

Post by Walker »

Peter Kropotkin wrote: Fri Dec 09, 2022 4:59 pm (I have been sick with Covid for two weeks, I am finally
healthy enough to write again, been a tough stretch) ...
I was watching for a response, I forget where, and after you were a no show I figured you were flummoxed.

Hope you feel better, looks like it!
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