Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

For all things philosophical.

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Peter Kropotkin
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Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

let us think about a specific attribute of the world..
time...is time objective or is time relative? and that
depends upon one's indoctrinations, one's education...
time for me seems to be relative... we, each of us,
experiences time differently....and within each of us,
we experience time differently at different times...
at work, when it is busy, time flies and when it is slow,
time tends to drag out.... the amount of busyness we have
will determine our experience with time...time is subjective
depending on how we experience it... and that experiencing of
time, is in part, based on our education, our indoctrinations of time...

and if something like time is subjective, then how can we claim to
"know", if something is objective?

the upshot of all this is basically that our understanding of
epistemology is dubious at best... what is knowledge and how do
we know what knowledge is and the limit and scope of knowledge is
thrown in doubt...for even knowledge is subjective, basically
interpretations of knowledge, not actual knowledge itself...

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

at present, I am reading a book called
"Continental Divide" by Peter E. Gordon,
this is a book about the famous debate between
Heidegger and Cassirer in Davos Switzerland in 1929...
and in this book, there is a book made that is
very important and lost in thinking about Kant....

That Kant's theories are epistemological theories...
theories about knowledge... the idea of "a priori"
is a theory about knowledge.. knowledge that we have
before experience and what that knowledge is...
and then we reflect on Descartes and we realized
that Descartes too was engaged in theories about knowledge...
''Cogito, ergo sum" is a theory about knowledge.. what
can we know and how do we know it... in the end, Descartes
believed that the only true knowledge we can know is,
"I think therefore I know"
and that knowledge is the only certainty we can find in
the world.... for what other knowledge is that certain?

In thinking about his, most of modern philosophy has been
theories about epistemology, or theories about knowledge...
what can we know and how do we know this..

Now think about our modern world, we say that
"knowledge is power" the modern world pursues knowledge...
but in a very limited way... we seek knowledge to gain the
baubles of existence.. we seek knowledge to get a job or
to make money or to get that title....but is that knowledge
actually the knowledge we should be seeking?

I hold no... that the modern knowledge is not only worthless,
but dangerous...it blinds us to the true path that we can hold
for our entire lives... which is more than I can say for
the baubles of existence... what is permanent in the
baubles of existence? is wealth permanent? nope, is fame permanent?
are titles permanent? are material possessions permanent?
no, on all counts...

the things we pursue are as fleeting as a fart in the wind...
in other words, that which we seek in our modern age is wrong...
but what should we be seeking for, striving for, if not the
fleeting baubles of existence?

we should be seeking ideas and values that are lifelong...
what does it mean to be a virtuous person? I can be a virtuous person
my entire life.. It can't be taken away from me or lost or stolen...
Values like love and honor and hope are values that cannot be lost
or stolen or taken away... it is in seeking values that last
an entire life, that we should be seeking, pursuing....

what does it mean to be a moral/ethical person?
that is seeking something that has value my entire life...
to be an moral/ethical person is something that will last
my entire life...not like money or fame or titles... they come
and go like the wind.. and have as much solid presence as
the wind... I can be an ethical/moral person my entire life...

as Socrates held, to seek out our soul and see to it that
we find out what it means to be human and what does it
mean to be a moral/ethical person is the real goal of existence...
and unlike the baubles of existence, I can pass down ethical/moral
values like honesty or love or to be an ethical/moral person to
my children in the values I teach them... unlike money or fame
or titles, I can pass down values that will endure as long as my
children follow those values...if they take the easy way out
and begin to follow modern day values and seek out the
baubles of existence, then those values are lost at the moment,
but not permanently lost, because another generation can seek
out and adapt values which are much more permanent than
wealth or power or fame or titles or material possessions...

what does it mean to be an ethical/moral person has more permanence
than any of the baubles of existence in our modern society today...

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

so what should we be doing as philosophers?
what should we be seeking if not the baubles of
existence?

Instead of seeking knowledge for the purpose or sake of
the baubles of existence, we should be seeking knowledge
that informs us as to what it means to be human...seeking
out what it means to be an ethical/moral person is far more
important than seeking out how to make money or claim fame
or to buy a new car every 2 years...

we seek out the wrong information for the wrong purpose..
we don't need to be seeking out how to gain titles or fame or
material possessions... to gain skill/knowledge that allows
us to make money or gain titles... which is the entire point
of education today....to acquire skills to make money...
that is what modern education is today...

So, what are we to do? we should engage in what is called,
Lebensphilosophie... or life philosophy....

we need to work out what values are the values we personally
and collectively need and should have... we should be working out
what it means to be human... a human being is...... and then
work out the values that a human being ought to have...

not knowledge to make money, but knowledge to become human,
to travel from being an animal to being animal/human to becoming
fully human... and that path isn't the path of least resistance,
of seeking the baubles of existence... the harder road of
life, is seeking out what it a good person, and what values does a
good person have? to seek out the moral/ethical implications of
being human.. that is the road of knowledge we should be
engaging in, not the pointless pursuit of wealth or power or fame or....

a Lebensphilosophie should engage with us as human beings in
all facets of being human, not just in what job we have to make
money or gain titles or collect fame...

our profession or means of making money is the least important
way we are human.... as it obvious from our modern capitalistic
society, the drive for profits/money has no need for ethical concerns,
has no need for aesthetic concerns, has no need for even
metaphysical concerns... seeking money is only about seeking money,
it has no other point.... thus denying us as ethical/moral people
and denying us as people with aesthetic concerns, and denying us
as people with metaphysical concerns...


a Lebensphilosophie that is only concerned with making money or
finding fame denies us any value as human beings, because it denies us
becoming ethical or moral or having aesthetic concerns.. for
money only seeks money and fame only seeks fame and titles
only seeks titles....

a Lebensphilosophie must be concerned with becoming human,
not with making money or finding fame...

So, what Lebensphilosophie do you have?

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

to say this another way:

to seek out money, fame, titles, material possessions,
power.. is to seek out personal goals.. for the seeking of
wealth or titles is an individual concern, it has no collective
value.. it only benefits the one, not any one else...

where if we seek values like justice or freedom, we not
only benefit the one, but we benefit all.... for justice
is another word for equality... and equality benefits all, not
just one person... and seeking freedom benefits all, not
just one person like fame or power benefits the one individual...

if I am true and seek justice, I seek justice for everyone
and that is the value for seeking justice.. it benefits all...

the values worth seeking are values that benefit everyone, not
just single individuals and their pursuit of wealth or fame or titles...

my own survival as a human being is inextricably linked to other
human beings... I cannot, cannot survive alone or by myself...
I must have others to meet my own needs.. needs like love,
security/safety, esteem, even basic biological needs like food,
water, shelter, education, are needs only met by the many,
the society at large, I cannot by myself met my own needs...

my own personal fate is determined by my connection to
the society at large...our own individual success is predicated
on the society at large... the society at large, can by its actions
or inaction doom me to failure and even death.. but I personally
have very little to no impact on the society at large..

by seeking values like justice or freedom, I don't just see this
through with my own personal self being rewarded, but
I am rewarded by the society itself being more just or more
free... and that is the context we must work out... not what benefits
me personally, be it wealth or power or fame or material possessions,
but values like justice or freedom or the value of love that benefits
the society... what values benefit society, not just what values
benefit me personally.....

so ask yourself, what values do benefits society? and what can I do
to bring about that value or values to make society and then me,
better off?

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

however in opposition to the current "myths"
and ideologies of communism and capitalism
and dictatorships, we do have free will...
the basic premise of communism and capitalism
and dictatorship is that we are compelled to
follow the dictates of communism/capitalism/dictatorships...

what is the goal of communism? the creation of a "worker state"..
and what is the goal of capitalism? to make money but also one
is powerless against the forces of supply and demand... people
get hired and fired depending on what the demand supply is...
that is a belief in forces outside of oneself.. forces that dictate
lives, our fortunes, our health and our death....forces beyond
our control... and both capitalism and communism hold to this idea
of being "forces beyond or outside of our control" instead of pursuing
capitalism and communism and dictatorships, in which our own
fate is determined by forces outside of our control, we
engage with ism's and ideologies that allow us to make our own
choices and engage in freedom... we should be seeking those
ism's...... ideologies that make freedom a priority, that make
justice a priority... those are the ism's and ideologies that
that we should be engaged with....not in ism's that leave our fate
to the hands of impersonal forces of dialectical materialism
or the impersonal forces of the market...

but we don't even try to work out other ism's and ideologies, ones that
don't take our freedom away in the name of the forces of the market or the
forces of dialectical materialism...

a political and economic and philosophical system that has
justice and freedom at its heart, not the seeking of the sophistries
of modern society that pretend we are free and have justice....
we are neither free nor do we have justice... let us being there and ask,
what are other possibilities we can think of that allow us to be free and to
have justice as the basis of our lives... not to pursue the
false idols/ gods of money, fame, titles and material possessions...
that only feed into the current narrative of communism and capitalism
and dictatorships... that we are pawns of vast forces that we are not
in control of, and have no ability to control....that is the myth of
capitalism and communism.... that we are pawns, victims of
ideologies that deny the individual and glamorize the false idols
of modern day success...

what ism or ideology that allows us to control our individual fate
and still be of value to the society/state? that is the real search we
must engage in....

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

let us look at an attempt to create freedom...
existentialism... the beginning of existentialism is,
a Heidegger says, "the way in which we are thrown
into the world" and then our response to being
"thrown into world" most think about existentialism from
the second standpoint, "freedom" but we should
actually begin with the first standpoint..
which is "we are thrown into the world"

this is no different than capitalism or communism or
even Catholicism... where we are simple pawns of
the various ism's and ideologies...
we have very little to no choice given to us in capitalism,
''the forces of the market'' decide our fate and in communism,
where the forces of the dialectical materialism" determines our
fate... and what choice do we have in being "thrown into the world"..
our reaction to this is partly about freedom but we are still faced
with the problem that we have no choice in being "thrown into the world"

given our birth into a set of social/economic/political and philosophical
positions lay outside of our control..... we are born into our fate,
be it poor or in the country we are born into or in my case,
being born handicap... I had no choice...

and the question becomes, in what fashion can we gain or
regain our freedom? "we are born/thrown into the world"
and our response is, how are we to gain freedom from being born/
thrown into the world in which we had no choice, no freedom in
being born/thrown into the world....

at what point does our gaining freedom become a factor?
at what age or time in our lives should we begin to engage in
the pursuit of freedom? One answer is once we become aware of it...
but if the forces of necessity, capitalism and communism try very hard
to prevent us from seeing the who, what, when, where, how and why
of being born into their respective ism's.... those forces try very hard
to prevent us from seeing how we can gain freedom in our lives,
when we can seek or pursue freedom from capitalism or communism or
Catholicism... the forces of determination, which is what we can call
those ism's and ideologies, try to keep us from thinking about
any possible escape from those forces of tyranny, that is
capitalism and communism and Catholicism...there is no method
of release or acquittal or freedom from those ism's and ideologies...
we are doomed to be in domination from those forces of absolutes...

and the question is, how do we find freedom/escape from those
absolutes of communism, capitalism, Catholicism?

the path to finding freedom from ism's and ideologies becomes
the main mission of our lives... but should it be? the act of
finding, seeking freedom lies in not only being free from something,
but in being free toward something... and so, what should we
do to seek freedom towards something, not in opposition to something...

seeking freedom as a positive, not as a negative.. toward something,
instead of away from something...

one possible path is the path of Nietzsche, of overcoming and
of a reevaluation of values... both paths, often becoming one path,
is one possible way to become free toward something, as oppose to
becoming free in opposition to something...

so, how do I become free towards something, a oppose to
being free in opposition to something?

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

it seems, at least to me, that freedom is a much harder
thing to go toward.. as freedom is bound by many things..
in other words, we are not born free, we are born within
a certain nationality, race, creed, color, sex, even our name is
given to us... there is very little freedom in being born in
America or being born in 1959 or being born white or male..
these things are, for lack of a better word, determined for us..
I had no choice in the who, what, when, where, how and why of
my birth.. as Heidegger said, "thrown into the world"
so we can also see that we have limited political, social,
legal, economic and national choices.... as an American,
I am limited to my legal rights, I am limited as to my freedom
of expression, (I can't yell fire in a crowded theater)
I am limited as to my actions by law, ( I cannot hit or harm
someone without some legal issues or run someone over with my
car) I am limited as to where I can smoke and drink and
get high.. I am limited in a vast variety of ways... and this,
being limited, is being limited in my "freedom" I am not free to
act as I so desire.. I am not free to be me, as it were...

and so we have, at best, a limited freedom... so, in our pursuit
freedom, we know that we are limited by social, legal, economic
and political topology of our state and country...

but what about another concept.. Justice...can we pursue justice
in a way that isn't as limited as freedom? To be just, is to be
equal.... for that is exactly what justice is, equality before
the law... it is political justice or equality.. Justice in
economics demand that we treat everyone equally economically,
(which we don't do in capitalism, in which because of titles or wealth,
we treat some people differently than other people)

all of this is just a long way to say that pursuing justice is a
better possibility than pursuing freedom... we can achieve justice,
given the nature of justice before we can achieve freedom... this suggests to
me that we ought to be engaged in the pursuit of justice before we
can pursue freedom... as justice is easier to achieve than freedom....
we can pursue justice as a societal possibility before we can
achieve freedom, which is an individual possibility...

freedom is about our own individual freedom and justice
is a collective action about all of us.... we seek individual freedom
and pursue a collective justice...

so what is more important, the one, the individual or the many,
the collective and you can see what is more important, freedom
or justice....

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

as noted, philosophy has been engaged with epistemology
as its area of study... from Descartes to Kant, philosophy
was about the study of knowledge.... and that is certainly
one way to go, but there are other areas of philosophy
that deserve as much attention, if not more.....

one is ethical/moral philosophy called surprisingly enough,
ethics and the other area is aesthetics.. the study of aesthetics,
which is the study of beauty or the appreciation of beauty....

and one may ask, why ethics or why aesthetics? and the
question is completely legitimate...

I ask you, does anyone today, write about beauty?
I can't find it... and in seeking beauty and appreciating beauty,
there is virtually no word of that today... and why? because
the seeking of the baubles of existence has push turned the seeking
of beauty into a financial act... beauty only has value if it can be
monetized in some fashion.... look at the sale of paintings, objects
of ART and see that their only value comes in the buying or
selling of ART... we view ART and ARTIST in terms of the
money it can generate.. not in terms of the beauty it creates...
and in monetizing ART, we have devalued ART, as we have devalued
almost everything because it has been monetized... a home,
something most people aspire to, has value only because it
too has been monetized... the beauty of a house has been monetized,
cheapened into how much will it cost me?

our lives is full of mass-produced goods that only have value because
there are cheaply produced... not because of how they look or
if they have any aesthetic value, but how cheaply they are made...
and mass assembly products mirror our lives.. for we live in
a mass-produced existence...we are measured, timed, weighed,
inspected, as just another other mass produced item...

I have two set of numbers that I tell with every day, my
work number, the one I must type into the keyboard at
work... and the other mass produced number, my social
security number...but they are hardly the only numbers I have,
my retirement account has numbers and my various bank accounts
need numbers and to get online to see various accounts requires
numbers... think of all the passwords we must have to navigate
our way around the internet.. we have a little green book that
informs us of our various passwords.... as you have some means
of remembering your passwords... and what are passwords?
just another means of identifying ourselves...and we have
even more numbers to hand onto... my various bills have many
identifying numbers..... we are turned into or monetized into
impersonal numbers... we have no value as human beings, but our
value is found in what we can consume, produce or work....
we, as human beings, only have value as consumers, producers
or workers... we are, in our daily lives, monetized to create wealth..
that is our value.. in what we can create in terms of money, wealth
or profits... we have no daily engagement with morality/ethics or
aesthetics.. because the pursuit of money has nothing to do with
morality/ethic or aesthetics....in fact, we are discouraged from
any engagement with morality/ethics or the appreciation of beauty
because it creates no money or profits...

beauty for the sake of beauty is discouraged because it creates
no profits.. who sits down and watch the sunset for its beauty?
unless it can be monetized, it has no value in our modern world...
and morality/ethics is discouraged because it doesn't create
profits or wealth.. morals and ethics in fact, are discouraged because
they lie in the way of making profits/wealth...

as long as a company puts profits first, it will not engage with
morals or ethics or even any sort of aesthetic understanding of
the world... they are not profitable....and profits are the only
goal of the world today....

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

a great deal of existentialism is based upon notions
of angst, anxiety, terror of existence... and what
is major part of the Romantic movement?

It is the primacy of emotions.. recall that the Romantic
movement is a rejection of the "Enlightenment" period,
in which reason or rationality was the goal....if this idea is
true, then existentialist have simply taken a page from
the Romantic movement and have made an emotion,
be it angst or anxiety or terror or some combination of the
three or more emotions, be the primary driver of our actions...

Existentialism isn't a rejection of the Romantic Movement,
it is a continuation of it... think of Heidegger, his idea of
"thrownness into existence" isn't about an intellectual or rational
response to being "thrown into the world" His "Da-sein"
or "Being" is an emotional response to being "thrown into the world"

that Heidegger was anti-intellectual is not in dispute, but he
simply continued the "Romantic Movement" into feelings
and emotions instead of turning to rational or logical or
reason as his means of "interpreting" the world.... Heidegger
"being" is an emotional response to his impressions of the world...
not a logical or reasoned response to the world...

Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

in our thinking about what human beings are,
we can come up with one possible explanation,
that human beings are "creatures that interpret"
and the basis or framework of our interpretations
is within the ism's and habits and indoctrinations
and childhood beliefs that we are taught from birth...

for example, if we are taught that blacks are "inferior"
that indoctrination becomes the framework for
interpretations of the world....our bias or our childhood
prejudice/indoctrinations become one way we see the world...

so this might work in such a fashion.. I see a group of people,
and because of my childhood bias or indoctrinations,
I see the black people in that group as being "inferior"
it is irrelevant as to the "truth" of whether black people
are actually "inferior" (spoiler alert, they aren't) but I view
the world, interpret the world in terms of my prejudice against
black people...or to say this another way, I have "knowledge"
taught to me as a child, in which I interpret the world in terms
of this childhood indoctrinations... epistemology, or in terms
of my knowledge of the world, my knowledge of others, specifically
black people is informed by black people being set up in a
category of being "inferior".... as we are unable to break out
of our prejudice as being a indoctrination or prejudice, our
indoctrinations, or education, we interpret all black people as
being ''inferior''..

black people are placed into the category of being ''inferior'',
but we might think, because our bias/prejudice is so ingrained,
that our bias against black people is ''a priori''.. before evidence..
we mistake our indoctrinations/education as being a certainty,
''a priori''.. and because we believe that ''a priori'' knowledge
is a given, more ''factual'' than knowledge gained by experienced,
we put more faith in ''a priori' knowledge than we do in knowledge
gained by experience...the idea that there is a god, that knowledge
is ''a priori'' and believed before facts...we are told that ''faith''
is a better guide for knowledge than experience....
"faith before reason" is the expression...faith in the "a priori"
knowledge before the knowledge of experience...that is the basis
of virtually all religions, ''faith'' before experience...

let us try this, in Buddhism, the faith is in the "knowledge" that
we are reincarnated over and over and over again.. and yet,
we have no proof of this knowledge outside of faith... if we
are reborn over and over and over again, where is the evidence?
What facts support this "knowledge?"
it is considered to be a "certainty", that we are constantly
being reborn, but that "certainty" is nothing more than our
childhood indoctrinations/education... it is based on faith
and not on any evidence...

this is just one example of our "knowledge" being faith based,
"a priori", and not based on any actual physical evidence that
we can point to facts or evidence proving that point...

In fact, much of what we actually believe in, is "faith based"
"a priori" before the evidence.. the idea of "American exceptionalism"
that America has been granted some sort of special ticket by god,
is a faith base idea, not a fact base idea...
that "America is number one"... shouted at international sporting
events all over the world, is a faith based, ''a priori" belief...

in Nietzsche "overcoming" what one is overcoming are these
faith base, "a priori" before the evidence, beliefs...
we are overcoming our childhood indoctrinations and education...
to beliefs that are evidence based, that fit into what is true about
the world according to what we see, hear, smell, touch and taste,
not based on some pre-made categories of our childhood..
we interpret the world based on our indoctrinations/education and not
based on any actual facts or evidence...

what we think of as categories of "a priori" are really nothing more
than our childhood education/indoctrinations.....
so Kant and Aristotle created "categories" and we are taught
as much in school, are really just indoctrinated categories of
our childhood...to take one such category, time/space...
we are indoctrinate/educated into ''knowing" what time and space is,
but that "a priori" belief of time and space, is really just our childhood
indoctrinations.... that there aren't already pre-made categories
of Kant or Aristotle is what we must take from this... what
categories we might hold, come from our childhood education/
indoctrinations... we have just forgotten that we were indoctrinated/
educated into holding these "categories", that they are not
categories we hold via "a priori" or before evidence... we are taught
to have categories and what are the specific categories we hold isn't
"a priori" but given to us by childhood education/indoctrinations...
we have just forgotten this...


Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
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Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

I think what is needed at this point is a
deeper look into this idea of "a priori" knowledge itself....

"a priori" means before experience...and what can we know
before evidence? the idea of god, this idea of Kant's and Aristotle's
categories, are two such examples...we have categories in our minds
at birth.. before we ever experience them...at this point it may
be beneficial to think about animals....

Human beings, were or are, or always will be animals...if we follow
Nietzsche, we are on a path of going from being animals, where some
human beings are, to being a mix of animal and human,
and some, some have become fully human... they have outgrown
the animal and part animal, part human within us...Goethe for
example, Gandhi and MLK, the saints and philosophers and thinkers
we worship for example are those who are above us, being fully
human, and not as we are, part animal, part human...

and we try to outgrow our animal nature.. that is the point of
overcoming... to leave the animal in us, behind us... to seek
out our human possibilities, not our animal possibilities...

and what of animals? look at a dog or a cat, I have one lying before me...
and that cat cannot grow or overcome being a cat... it can only do
what its nature, what evolution has programmed in it...
a cat cannot become a dog or a dinosaur or a cow..
cannot bark or grunt or moo.... its programming is quite clear...
and cats cannot outgrow that programming.. of being a cat...
but let us think about this.. is the cats programming, of millions
of years of evolution, the same thing as "a priori" before experience?
Yes, that a cat is born with "a priori" programming of being a cat,
it will do cat things because of evolution, and not with experience..
a cat can become a more efficient cat, but it cannot change its nature of
being a cat... that is by definition, "a priori" but its "a priori" nature,
of being a cat wasn't created by god or fate, but by millions of
years of evolution...now let us think about the human creature...

we have, as babies, three instinctual fears, of snakes, the dark and
of falling... these fears, they are in fact, "a priori" before experience...
and they come from millions of years of evolution...now we have
what we might call "a priori", before experience beliefs..
such as god or time or space... but what if, what if those
"a priori" beliefs are actually just the work of evolution...we navigate
time and space, not because of some ''a priori'' plant by god, but
by our millions of years of evolution? some have said, that for example,
language is "a priori" the ability to ''know'' language, is "a priori"
but what if that ''a priori'' is really just instinct taught to us by
evolution? millions of years and hundreds of thousands of generations
of human beings... the "a priori" of god and language and categories
is actually prior programming of millions of years of evolution....
the very concept of ''a priori" is just a million years of evolution
working on us....try as we might, we cannot escape the evolution
of millions of years within us...just as cats have been programmed
by evolution into being nothing more than cats, we human beings
are programmed by evolution into being human beings...

now come the interesting part, because we are human, this gives
us something that cats or dogs or cows cannot do, which is to overcome
our millions of years of evolution.. think of the fight or flight programming
that all animals have... and humans have it as well, but we are able to
overcome that instinct, that programming into making other choices
instead of fight or flight... we can overcome our millions of years of
evolution from fight or flight into a third or even a 4th choice...

that is what is possible for human beings... to overcome our instincts,
our evolution, our ''a priori" before experience ideas...

to be human, means to overcome that which has been installed into
us by evolution, as instincts or "a priori".... instincts or "a priori" is
nothing more than a million years of evolution...

categories, god, heaven, hell, instincts, fear of falling, ''a priori",
fight or flight, is all born of millions of years of evolution...

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

Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

in thinking about the ancient world, in term of how they
approached both philosophy and religion, specifically the
catholic religion, and how the modern world approaches
both philosophy and religion....what is the difference?

and I think the difference lies in their level of commitment to
their respective beliefs...to the ancient world, it wasn't
enough to proclaim that one "values" those beliefs, religions
or philosophical, one had to commit to those beliefs as
a way of life...to come to one of the philosophical schools
of Athens, be it Plato's or Aristotle's or stoicism or hedonism...
was to commit to these beliefs as a way of life, not as we do
as moderns, in which we hold and dispose of our beliefs as
easily as we change our clothes... for us today, religion and
philosophy is not something we do as a way of life, as something
we do 24/7... for example, if I learn about Kant's universal ethics,
I learn it and then promptly forget about it the second I walk out
of the classroom...it is a theoretical belief, not a way of life belief...
I am not expected or even wanting to carry these beliefs as
a way of life, as they did in ancient times...if you went to
Plato's school and was taught these things, it was expected
you used them as a way of life, not just forgotten when you
walked out the door, our modern way...

who today carries their beliefs, be it philosophical or politically,
as a way of life? as something to engage with 24/7?

our modern way of life involves the gaining, the pursuit of
the trinkets of existence, the gaining of the baubles of existence,
money, fame, titles, material possessions, power.. if you want to know
what people live for today, you can say it's the baubles of existence...
not as it was in ancient times, when we carry our beliefs as
a way of life, as a means of guiding us from birth to death...
in ancient times, we lived our philosophy or religion,
not just used them as study aids to pass a test and then forgotten...

if you want to know the major difference between the ancient world
and ours, this is it... our modern beliefs or values or philosophy are not
used to guide our lives, in the way that the ancients' values become
their way of life...

if their was a failure in our modern ideologies, such as liberalism,
it is in this use of liberalism as something that isn't lived or used
as a way of life... liberalism as an ism, can only have real/true
value if it is lived, as a way of life...

the modern way of life uses, as a way of life, the pursuit of
the baubles of existence... instead of values like liberalism...
so let us think about an ism, like existentialism, it failed because
it wasn't used as a way of life... if you truly hold the values and
beliefs of existentialism, then you must live and if need be, die
by those values and beliefs...

and the same holds true for religions, how few actually hold their
religions values as a way of life... think of those who used their
values as a way of life, MLK, Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
Paul Tillich as examples...

but it isn't enough to hold philosophical or religious values
as a way of life... we must engage with our values in terms of
the religious, the philosophical and, and politically...

therein lies the strength of the French thinkers in the 20th
century.. Sartre for example, who held beliefs and values
and then acted upon them personally, socially, philosophically
and politically... to hold to Marxism as a social value or a
political value isn't enough, it must be a value that is lived...
it isn't enough to fight for liberal values if we don't hold ourselves
to them socially, economically, politically, philosophically,
as a way of life... that is the real value of such ism's as liberalism
or conservativism...or libertarian...
to live those values and beliefs, as way of life, in all
aspects of our life.... or to say this another way, it isn't enough
anymore to pay lip service to our values, we must engage with
them as a way of life, as something to engage with 24/7/365
to engage with these values with has much effort as we spend
on making money or seeking fame or researching what car to buy...

personally, I am irritated by ads on TV talking all the time about
researching retirement programs, or 401k plans.... which takes our
focus from what is happening today, right now and spending our time/effort
on some future event that we might not even live to see....
the only value of these plans or ads is to make money for the one's
offering those plans...we see people on vacation or walking around
the office or at home... staring at their phones as how much money
is in their retirement plan or 401k plan...what about now? what
we should be focused on is the here and now, not some possible
and for many, a very distant event...personally, I have no idea how much
money I have saved up for retirement.. thinking about that, takes me away
from thinking about what am I to do? or what values should I be engaged
with? What does it mean to be human? Does thinking about my retirement
plan really answer any of that? like religions in which you spend your
time thinking about how to get into heaven and forget what your life
is, right here and right now....those who spend their days thinking about
how great heaven is going to be, forget about today and what it means
to be human today.. not in 5 or 10 or 40 years from now, but today...

you can't use wishful thinking about your retirement or getting to
heaven to negate thinking about what values are values worth living for
today, right now... what values should we be using as a way of life,
not how much money is in my 401k plan...

this is really a question of priorities... what should your priorities be,
about some possible future, or about what is, right now...
what values should we be using as a way of life.. that is the real
priority, not in some future fantasy wish list....

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

Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

in thinking more about our modern age and how we
consider our modern age to be a scientific age and how
philosophy, modern philosophy has grown up in the shadow
of science...so let us consider this, both science and philosophy,
as constituted in our modern age, is based on epistemology..
knowledge, what we know, how we know and the limits and scope
of our knowledge... both science of the modern age and philosophy
in the modern age is based on epistemology, what we know,
how we know it and the limits and scope of that knowledge..
this is one of the basic descriptions of Kant...and of philosophy since
Descartes.... his basic method is an epistemological method...
a question of what we can know and why...

and I believe that part of philosophy problems over the last
several centuries has been its engagement with epistemological
theories and not theories about metaphysics or ethics or
aesthetics.. it has been based on understanding knowledge,
and not on the understanding of who we are and what
it means to be human... how to take our beliefs and
hold them as a way of life, that is an entirely different
basis for philosophy.. then the basis for philosophy
since Descartes....

the question of "what am I to do" doesn't really require an
understanding of epistemology... it requires knowing what is
the point or meaning of existence... what is the goal or purpose
of existence? and that answer is not an epistemology question...

justification of knowledge has been one of the primary tasks of
science and philosophy and ethics and all the rest...
but we can live, to have a way of life, without our being
able to justifying it...

if we think about the way philosophy has been primarily about
epistemology, the point may be to live our lives, to be engage with
philosophy as a way of life, not to justify it....

one of the philosophical questions, I hear, a lot, is how do you justify
that belief or value? perhaps we should be asking instead is, how
do you intend to hold that belief or value, as a way of life?

we find our justifications in the way we live our lives, according to those
values and beliefs.. we find justifications in our experience with those
values and beliefs, not as a theoretical construct within philosophy..
Kant says we should hold values that can be made into universal truths..
that is the theory, but what is the reality, the experience of living
that "universal truth?" People shouldn't lie because if you make it
a universal truth, it doesn't work... but the reality is, that we
lie to make our lives, and other lives, easier to live with...
If I told the truth about everyone at work, not only would people
hate me, but I would be fired...white lies allows us to maintain
the peace, as it were between people...society functions better with
white lies than it does with the straight truth....

In other words, Kant is wrong.. we can make lying a universal truth
and the world will be a better place than if we tell the absolute truth...

we lie and we know, and everyone else knows it, but no one says
the obvious out loud...society/state/civilization only works when we
tell lies, not when we tell the truth...

this type of "knowledge" cannot be justified in any real way,
but it is a fact of life...the truth often runs counter to
our thinking about what it means to be human...

but the problem lies with our "facts"... our knowledge is
wrong, but we can't often admit it...

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

Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

The search in philosophy, as in science, as is religion,
is to find certainty... life means this..... or I can state
what is true is......and we can, if we hold to philosophy
or science or religion, that X, Y, Z is true...
there is a god in heaven, that what is rational is real
and what is real is rational, there will be a worker's state after
the revolution, that people cannot change their spots... (born evil,
die evil) that we are reincarnate, that ancestors watch over us...
all of these have been considered to be "certainties"....

but if I were actually admit any of these as actual certainties,
I would by lying... if there is a truism of the universe, that there
is nothing in the universe that is certain..

look at science and see that given the new "rules" of physics,
of quantum mechanics, of the role chance plays in evolution,
and of the very uncertainty of, well, everything... there is nothing
I can point out that is, in fact, certain.... probability, chance, odds,
possibilities, contingency, these things are what rule the universe,
not certainty or absolute, or irrefutable....

an earthquake in Turkey, a man dies of a heart attack,
a storm hits Japan, a tornado destroying every house in
a neighborhood but one... the random and chaotic existence
we live in cannot be denied as long as one has eyes to see....
instead of seeking that which is certain and quite unattainable,
we should focus our beliefs on the nature of chance, of randomness,
of chaos.... that is what we should be working out, a philosophy of
chaos, of chance, of randomness...for that is what our existence is,
random, chaotic and chance... we are born in a random, chaotic
universe, and we live and die within a random, chaotic universe....

the rest of that stuff, of trying to pretend that we can forecast our
future or know what is next, that is nothing more than whistling
while walking past the cemetery... it is meant to give us some sort
of comfort, peace of mind...instead of seeking a philosophy of
certainty, we should seek a philosophy that embraces chance,
chaos, randomness.... that is the philosophy of the future....

seeking a philosophy that actually understands what it means
to be human.. a human being in a random, chaotic universe
that is based on chance and probability.... not on certainty....
for the fact is that there is no such thing as certainty in our
universe...and any attempts to create a certainty, either in
philosophy or in actual actions is doomed to failure...

to be human is to be in a universe that has no certainty...
is that a bleak and unfriendly universe? perhaps, but it can become
something else.... if there is no certainty in philosophy or science
or technology or the state or in religion, what is left for us?

to embrace, 100% a universe that is uncertain, full of chance
and probability...we live in a chaotic universe, let us embrace
that.... let us celebrate that... we no longer dance to the god of
certainty, we dance on a thin sheet of ice wondering if that ice will
break beneath our feet.. and that is what we do.. dance as if we
are on thin ice... the dance that accepts and celebrates the
fleetness and chance that is our world, our universe...

let us dance to, embrace what is, that of chance, probability,
of chaos....

did you know that there is nothing in the entire universe that is
100% efficient... in fact, given the chemical reactions within
our bodies and the friction in our joints and other tissues, human
beings are only 25% efficient in converting food into energy...and
in fact, engines such as car engines are efficient.. up to
perhaps 20% efficiency and a corn field is only about 1.5% efficient...
such things as solar panels are around 15% to 22% efficient
and the Sun itself is 0.07% efficient...

this understanding of the rate of efficiency in the universe is
what also suggests to us that we are not about certainty....
but we are living in a chaotic, random, universe full of chance...

nothing in our universe is 100%..... and this is what we must
engage with, not with any false beliefs in certainties...
or holding beliefs that something is 100%, anything...
the idea that there is a god, is a belief in some sort of certainty,
a belief in good and evil, is a belief in certainty, a belief in
reincarnation is a belief in a certainty.... the idea that
"Cognito ego sum" is a belief in a certainty.....

what is the new ideal of our universe?
that Schrodinger's cat is dead and alive, at the same time...
that is the new "Cognito ego sum" ....and that is our
understanding of the universe... it could be both or none....
let chance, chaos, randomness be our guide......

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

Re: Detective Kropotkin, at your service...

Post by Peter Kropotkin »

ok, let us, for the moment, agree with the above post,
what does that mean for certain philosophical concepts
such as "a priori?"

I cannot see how we can hold to concepts like
''a priori'', before or prior to experience, if the universe
is random or chaotic.... the only guide left in an random,
chaotic universe is experience....think about a random universe
in which chance plays a role... at no point can one predict or
know how chance will play out in our universe... what conditions
exists after chaos and randomness strike cannot be known...
you cannot know "a priori" what conditions will be after
chance or randomness occurs.. so how can one predict
what might happen before?

the earthquake in Turkey the other day, thousands are dead,
and millions are homeless....can you, before the fact, "a priori",
know where or under what conditions will the earthquake create?

its all chance and probabilities and chaos that govern an earthquake,
and the events in our lives...being fired, getting into an car accident,
having an appendix out, or in my case, yesterday my steering pump
went out, and the bill is over $1500 bucks...

can I know any of this, "a priori" before experience...

I can by experience, know how this whole pump thing is going to
work out, I will be out of a car for a few days and I will have to take
public transportation... which sucks, but it is what it is....

randomness and chance governs our lives, not certainty....

and philosophy must begin with that fact of chance, randomness
and chaos...

let us work out the philosophy of chance, chaos, and randomness...

Kropotkin
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