human beings are?

[Peter Kropotkin]

the idea of human beings being metaphysical/ontological beings
is one possibility of understanding what a human being is,
or perhaps we can think of humans as being beings that work,
or that we could be beings that pray or perhaps, we are beings
that hold to hope?

anyone of these may or may not be right....
we could also be thought of as rational beings or
irrational beings....

but all actions and beliefs flow from an understanding of what
human beings are....for example, how can we create laws
if we don't know what human being are? Which is a major part
of the failure of conservative states... they have a very flawed
understanding of human beings...that human beings are fixed
and unable to change... clearly not true...
that most human beings are flawed, full of sin and that those
people WANT to sin, to be full of evil deeds...

and in fact, the truth is different... most people actually
want to do the right thing.. but sometimes, for whatever reason,
knowing what the right thing to do is somewhat elusive ...
sometimes it's hard to know what the right thing to do is....
and sometimes, because of the random nature of the universe,
we can do the right thing and it can turn all wrong, quite
quickly...

there is a problem with our actions in that we cannot know
the results of any action we take.... for a wide variety of reasons...
and this is true of our actions, both individually and collectively....
and this is in part due to the chaotic, random nature of the universe....
sometimes I think that the path to right actions is very narrow and
hard to find and the path to failure is quite wide and easy to find...

and therein lies the two paths of understanding, the rational
and the emotional... both paths can lead us to the right road,
and both paths can lead us to complete and total failure....
and we can't know what path is the right path, ''a priori''....

but even if we combine them into some mix, of both
rational and emotional, we can still be lead wrong....
because of the random and chaotic nature of the universe....
chance impacts all aspects of our existence....

so, given the role of chance and randomness,
what are human beings?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

instead of focusing on the idea of philosophies, let us
focus instead on our lives.....

I will take today for example.... I woke up around 7:30,
then after a bit of waking up, I engaged in Philosophy...
I continued to read my current reading which is

"What is Existentialism?"

by William Barrett... who wrote an incredible important book
called, ''Irrational Man"...Which I just finished, again...
I also spent my morning writing here... around 10:30,
my wife announces that she wants to go out for lunch,
no problem, she decides on our favorite Chinese restaurant,
a bit of a drive, but no problem...so, we get ready and leave
around noon... at the restaurant, the road on front of it is blocked
and we have to take the backroads to get there...
as it is cold and rainy around here, the place was packed....
we got a table, ate and then took the leftovers home....
once home, my wife took a nap and I watched the football
game until I too fell asleep...then I just puttered about doing
laundry for a bit....and here we are....

I can't really point out anything special or important about today...
it was like millions of other days I've had, where I was doing laundry
or running errands or cleaning or being at work...
there was nothing to stand out about today... another day in the life...

which is kinda my point.. how many interesting or valuable days do
we have in our lives? I have been alive for roughly 768 months,
and I doubt that the number of days actually worth living amount
to maybe a month of those 768 months...maybe...

a king once decided to list all the days of his 15 year reign
to the number of days he was happy............ in 15 years,
a king, how many days of happiness did he come to?
he said, 12... he had 12 days of happiness in 15 years...
and the fact of the matter is that is the same for us...
how days of our lives actually matter, or in which we are
happy? in my 64 years, how many days that I have lived
that have some value? Our days are spent on days much like mine
today...with our days spent on doing errands or cleaning the kitchen,
or working or going out.....but I can't count today as being
any day special or worth remembering... and this is true of the
vast majority of our lives...all of our lives... how many days do we
get to be or do something special or worth remembering?

Not many....not many at all.... in my 64 years, I might have a month's
worth of special or important days.... certainly nothing longer than a month
worth of recalling valuable days..

so, the question becomes, how do we create days, worth living or even
worth remembering? where do we find the value in our lives if, if they
are spent doing what I did today, or running errands or cleaning the house
or working?

so many lost days to inconsequential events in our lives...
where are the days that mattered or should have mattered?

I have lived roughly 768 months in my life.... with maybe 20 months
where it mattered that I was alive...I have roughly 120 months left
in my life. (ten years), so how do I go about making those months and
days worth living? Making those days about something that will make
a difference or worth something? most of our lives is the dull
bland of routine and mindless chatter and wasted days...

what can make a difference? in my life and in yours?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

I have work later so I must be brief...

given the above statement, that we lead boring, mundane lives,
(for the most part) and the question arises as to how do we give
our lives meaning and purpose? now some might claim that,
somehow, a belief in god/Jesus will return our lives to meaning
and purpose... but I have seen Christian lives and they are just
as mundane and banal as my life is and they, if honest, admit this....

if you look to some ism or ideology to bring meaning or purpose into your
life, the problem is, as I have pointed out, that most ism's and ideologies,
are inherently nihilistic...the Christian focuses on death as giving meaning,
for once one has died, they can now go to heaven.. and achieve the goal
of sitting in heaven contemplating the greatness of god... a fate worse than
death in my book....or as the Buddhist do, achieve the goal of no
longer being born... to escape into the void that we came from....
and that is the point and purpose of existence, to return to that
void, into nothingness.....not my cup of tea....

one of the major questions of existentialism is how to achieve
an ''Authentic'' life? we have seen how most of our lives is filled with
mundane, meaningless activities like errands or cleaning the house...
and the question becomes how do we make our days, our hours,
into meaning and purpose?

and one path may be to achieve an ''Authentic'' life...
but what does an ''Authentic'' life look like? What does it
mean to have an ''Authentic'' life? and how does someone
achieve an ''Authentic'' life?

it has been said, that one who is true to themselves is leading
an ''Authentic'' life.....which is to say, they don't lead lives that
are mundane or boring.... or perhaps that means that people aren't
influenced by various isms and ideologies that so dominate our lives....
but how does one get to an ''Authentic'' life? what path does one take
to get to an ''Authentic'' life?

the ''Authentic'' life might be a life where we don't exist by the rules and dogma
of isms and ideologies...where an ''Authentic'' person isn't going to live
by the rules that say, if one wants to go to heaven, you must live by certain
rules... an ''Authentic'' life is where one decides the rules for themselves....
where one isn't chasing the goal/purpose of what others say, that to lead
a complete and full life, one must passionately live the religious life...

as of right now, the isms that we are expected to follow, are pathways
into nihilism...capitalism and communism and Catholicism and Buddhism.....
nihilistic, all of them..... for not one of them makes human beings
the center of attention, the basis of actions... each of the above
isms, deny and dehumanizes human beings and their values....
in favor of the ism in question...whereas the focus in capitalism
is in money and human beings are a commodity to make money,
they have no other values or purpose in capitalism...
and in communism, where the value of a person, is to bring
about the ''worker state'', and human beings are simply a commodity
to bring about the ''worker state''....

if in an ism, the value of a person is to bring about some sort of
change, then they are a commodity to be use, and not a person
who has value..... to find our ''Authentic'' lives, we must not become
a commodity, but we are the driver and owner of our own values
and beliefs...we have value because we are human... not commodities...
and that is part of what being ''Authentic'' means... we create our
own values and meanings and purposes.....

Kropotkin

[claytonsteele]

I have work later so I must be brief...
uno online
given the above statement, that we lead boring, mundane lives,
(for the most part) and the question arises as to how do we give
our lives meaning and purpose? now some might claim that,
somehow, a belief in god/Jesus will return our lives to meaning
and purpose... but I have seen Christian lives and they are just
as mundane and banal as my life is and they, if honest, admit this....

if you look to some ism or ideology to bring meaning or purpose into your
life, the problem is, as I have pointed out, that most ism's and ideologies,
are inherently nihilistic...the Christian focuses on death as giving meaning,
for once one has died, they can now go to heaven.. and achieve the goal
of sitting in heaven contemplating the greatness of god... a fate worse than
death in my book....or as the Buddhist do, achieve the goal of no
longer being born... to escape into the void that we came from....
and that is the point and purpose of existence, to return to that
void, into nothingness.....not my cup of tea....

one of the major questions of existentialism is how to achieve
an ''Authentic'' life? we have seen how most of our lives is filled with
mundane, meaningless activities like errands or cleaning the house...
and the question becomes how do we make our days, our hours,
into meaning and purpose?

and one path may be to achieve an ''Authentic'' life...
but what does an ''Authentic'' life look like? What does it
mean to have an ''Authentic'' life? and how does someone
achieve an ''Authentic'' life?

it has been said, that one who is true to themselves is leading
an ''Authentic'' life.....which is to say, they don't lead lives that
are mundane or boring.... or perhaps that means that people aren't
influenced by various isms and ideologies that so dominate our lives....
but how does one get to an ''Authentic'' life? what path does one take
to get to an ''Authentic'' life?

the ''Authentic'' life might be a life where we don't exist by the rules and dogma
of isms and ideologies...where an ''Authentic'' person isn't going to live
by the rules that say, if one wants to go to heaven, you must live by certain
rules... an ''Authentic'' life is where one decides the rules for themselves....
where one isn't chasing the goal/purpose of what others say, that to lead
a complete and full life, one must passionately live the religious life...

as of right now, the isms that we are expected to follow, are pathways
into nihilism...capitalism and communism and Catholicism and Buddhism.....
nihilistic, all of them..... for not one of them makes human beings
the center of attention, the basis of actions... each of the above
isms, deny and dehumanizes human beings and their values....
in favor of the ism in question...whereas the focus in capitalism
is in money and human beings are a commodity to make money,
they have no other values or purpose in capitalism...
and in communism, where the value of a person, is to bring
about the ''worker state'', and human beings are simply a commodity
to bring about the ''worker state''....

if in an ism, the value of a person is to bring about some sort of
change, then they are a commodity to be use, and not a person
who has value..... to find our ''Authentic'' lives, we must not become
a commodity, but we are the driver and owner of our own values
and beliefs...we have value because we are human... not commodities...
and that is part of what being ''Authentic'' means... we create our
own values and meanings and purposes.....

Kropotkin

So great! It’s true that many people struggle with finding meaning and purpose in their lives and me too. Luckily, I have my family.

[Peter Kropotkin]

in thinking about existence and specifically metaphysics...
there is nothing in our day to day activities that suggests
any type of need or wanting god or religion....

take today for example... I don't work today, so I am doing my
usual practice of sitting at the kitchen table and I read and I write here
and think about existence.... nothing I am doing suggest any type of
metaphysical needs or wants.. my wife is going to work.. currently
she is on a walk, after work, she will run some errands..
maybe clean the kitchen...depending on what time she gets home,
we may have lunch together, or not...

and where exactly is god or religion in this description of my day?
my day to day activities have no need or want to include any type
of divine presence.. I have no need for either god or religion in
this day to day life I lead...

indeed, I have little need for philosophy in my day to day, except
for some doubt as to the point of existence.. is my day to day,
really worth living? this type of doubt isn't meant for the day to day
activities, but about the wondering if that is all there is to it? is there
something outside or beyond just my day to day? so, where exactly
does the metaphysical reside in my day to day life of errands and work
and reading and cleaning the house?

but one needs god... or so goes the argument... I would argue
that one needs philosophy more..

In the mundane, banal life that we lead, do we need the metaphysical to
rise above our lives? Can the metaphysical/god, really bring us meaning in
the midst of our day to day lives of taking out the garbage and cleaning
the kitchen and eating dinner, running errands?
and because most of us are too busy engaged with our day to day lives,
we, most of us anyway, don't hear that nagging voice in the back of our
head, wondering, is this it? is this my existence, in spending my life,
cleaning the kitchen or fixing dinner or walking the dog? isn't there
something more to life than just running errands? It is that nagging voice
in the middle of the night that suggests that it is possible that there is
something outside/beyond of our day to day lives....

Human beings are the only animals that seek meaning in their lives...
for all other animals, the day to day is enough... there is no need for
any other reflection about life... so, what really happens in our
reflection about the meaning of existence? in thinking about it,
we are, in that doubt about our day to day life, we come to
realize that we are missing something in our day to day life...
but that ''missing'' thing is not necessarily about the metaphysical
needs of human beings... which kinda leads us to wondering
about the fact that one of the human beings needs is just as much
about what is missing as it is about what is there...
which is not to say that we all miss the same thing, no, each of
us feel our ''missing'' needs differently...

life is as much about what we are missing as it is about what we have...

what are you missing?

there are several answers as to what is missing in human beings...
we can go with the oldies but goodies, we can find the missing in
hedonism or we can find the missing in stoicism or perhaps in
the pursuit of happiness? some seek the missing in drugs or
sex or gambling or booze..... we seek the missing in our vices...
to fill that void we think we have..... but what if, what if that
void isn't a negative but a positive... for without that silent voice
making us think we are missing something, we might become
complacent or even self-righteous about our day to day life...
that void we feel is what drives us to escape the daily mundane,
the banality of our lives... I would say not enough people listen
to that silent voice, because their lives is just a marry go round of
running errands and cleaning the kitchen and making dinner...

that nagging voice inside of us, drives us to break out of the mundane
banality of our lives...in fact, I would suggest that instead of
filling that void, we leave it empty, and that would force us to
be restlessly seeking the world for something to fill that void..
that void might be exactly what human beings need and want...
whither we realize it or not.... that which is missing, forces us
to spend our lives in pursuit of something more.. and in that
pursuit we create ART and we question reality and we
are miserable... and that is a good thing...for we are no longer
content with our day to day lives/existence... for in that
discontentment, we seek something more, and we create who we are
in our ''winter of discontentment'' and we find our true nature in
that seeking of what is missing in our lives...

best not to fill that void and use that to become who you are....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and given both the ''missing'' side of human beings
and the busyness of our day to day life, I wonder
where exactly does such ideas as guilt, sin and salvation lie?

do we fit the idea of sin/guilt and salvation into the missing
part of our lives...whereas we feel/think something is missing
in our lives and is that where sin, guilt and salvation is found?

in my day to day life of running errands and cleaning the kitchen
and taking out the dog, do I even wonder where such things
as guilt and sin and salvation are? Again, it is in those quiet
moments of reflection and thought, that void, that brings up
the question of guilt, sin and salvation.....
certainly not during the busyness of our day to day lives....

is our lives really as empty as we might think it is or is that
a case of ''reflections'' going too far?  

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

I wonder why two words that were quite common in the past,
are no longer spoken today..

On word is ART and the other word is nature.... who has even
attempted a philosophical study of either one in the last few years?
(yes, I know that there some who will flood this space with dozens
of names who has done an in depth study of either nature or ART..
or both, but frankly, have any of those books had any type of impact
on our lives... thought not)

for many, nature doesn't need to be thought about because we have,
in some fashion, not explained, that we have overcome nature to the point
where human beings don't need to even think about their place in nature...
because we have risen above that sort of thing... we no longer exist
within nature....but we cannot escape nature so easily... for we are nature
incarnate...our behavior, our needs and wants, our biological and
psychological, all come from nature... we don't need to be in nature because
nature is within us...try as we might, we cannot overcome the nature that
exists within us.... we must seek out the biological needs of being human...
food, water, shelter, health care, education are all biological needs..
and we cannot escape our psychological needs of love, belonging,
esteem, safety/security....the very foundation of the human experience
lies within these two needs, the biological and psychological....

nature cannot be dismissed so easily if it is at the heart of the
human experience... the very essence of being human...

and ART... why have we lost the desire to speak about ART...
the very human need to expression... all human beings engage
in expressing something, be it love or hope or anger or
just plain boredom.... ART is just another means of expression
about what it means to be human... the problem with language,
is that it cannot always express what we are thinking or feeling...
we often express that beyond words in songs/music, movies, plays,
and of course, ART......

for example, I still love my wife, even after 27 years of marriage...
how would I express that? words don't even come close to matching
my feelings about my love...perhaps in music or in ART, I might be
able to fully express my love for her, perhaps, perhaps not....
love is a major part of the human experience and we don't
even have the words to fully express what we feel...
even after a couple of millions of years of being, we still can't
fully express love in words...

and the same goes for nature...people act as if human beings no
longer engage in nature...that we are somehow apart and separate
from nature... it no longer affects us or changes us...but as I explained,
that nature is in us, part of us, and every emotion that comes from
us, is nature... that in some fashion, thoughts are apart from or
separate from nature... that by being thinking beings, we are no
longer part of nature... as we are part of nature, we just don't see
it... when we act and the action is change by such things as chance
or randomness, that is nature.... let us say, I plan to drive to
Chicago, my journey can be derailed by random events like a
snowstorm or my car breaking down.... the car breaking down or
the snowstorm are random events, that impact our daily lives...
and that snow or car breaking down, that is nature at work....
for entropy is within nature, not outside of nature....
and so, we live within nature, even if, even if we won't admit
it or understand that....so much of human events come, not
from our plans but from the chance, randomness of existence...
we don't have to think about the planned stuff, we have to
think about the unplanned, random/chaotic forces of nature,
the randomness and chance that we live within..
otherwise known as nature....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Now I turn to a subject that has been, in my mind anyway,
the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the ''nature of human beings''...

we cannot underestimate the impact that the Industrial Revolution 
has had on human beings...human beings seem to be some combination
of the old heredity/nature vs the environment argument, that has gone on
for centuries... in some people, their inherited nature dominates,
and in some, the environment creates the person, which takes the lead...
and it is different for different people...and for most, it switches between the two...

we are fundamentally different beings after the Industrial Revolution
than before it....and how come? Because of the skill set required by
those who live in this new age... for example, think of all the different ways
we have to communicate without actually directly speaking to each other....
this has changed the dynamics of the interaction with people...for example,
one of the fundamental ways we communicate is not by language, but
by ''reading'' the other person....as a deaf person, I have gotten rather good
at reading people, basically because I can't hear them... I can ''read''
someone before I have even met them, by ''reading'' their body language,
their stance, the way they look, how they respond or don't respond to
stimuli or events around them.... are they using their ear buds? all of these
are signs to be ''read''... if I depended solely on their language, I would have
no idea what people are saying...and many people have lost this skill
of ''reading'' others.... and why? because communication is no longer
a personal interaction with others... we can text, email, call, write to
others or via social media, without ever personally interacting with them...
and on that basis, I cannot tell if the other person is being honest with me,
or is that person lying to me, or is that person being ''Authentic'',
I can't tell by those impersonal ways of communication...
and much of the world's troubles come from people not being able
to ''read'' others... communication skills in the best of times is often
lacking, so what about the worst of times, like today..
after the massive changes in communication that rose after
the Industrial Revolution....

another change of the Industrial Revolution is the fact that before
the Industrial Revolution, most people lived on farms and were
engaged in Agriculture in some fashion... in America, it was estimated
that it wasn't until 1900 or so, that the majority of American's lived
in cities... before that, most American's lived in rural area's...
and an agriculture way of life is vastly different from a city/urban
lifestyle...down to the very mindset of a rural person vs the mindset
of a city dweller... we can see this today in the ongoing conservative/
MAGA vs liberals,, which is a battle between the more rural parts
of America and the more urbanize parts... a MAGA person doesn't
even have a sense of the urbanized mechanical nature of our
existence...it's like the Industrial Revolution hasn't reached
rural America...

and what has the Industrial Revolution done to human beings?

it puts profits before people, it ''fetishes'' commodities like
money and people...(to steal a term from Marx) dehumanizes
and devalues people, which is nihilism... the devaluing of human
beings and their values.... all of this reduces the value of human beings,
which is no different than the isms of capitalism and communism and
Catholicism and Buddhism...all of which also practices the devaluation
of human beings.. and this new information age, where he who holds
the information is the most powerful person, means that information
becomes the value that is desired, not people... we are, once again,
devalued... for some impersonal resource.... a commodity,
information.. is valued more than human beings.... and that is,
nihilism....

we can now marked down what the value of the Industrial Revolution
has done... it is the practice of nihilism... in which human beings
are devalued and dehumanized... we are nothing more than
commodities to be used in the search for profits or better yet,
information.... if you want to cripple an organization today, don't
let it have any information or take away its information....
for the money to be made is made from the information that
corporation has, not by what it produces...

the problem since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is
that we have turn people into commodities and value them based
on what they can create, either information or profits, they have
been devalued because their being human is no longer enough...
or has any value... and that is what the Industrial Revolution done...
and its impact on our human nature cannot be denied...

as with all living beings, our environment determines our
our actions and our living strategies....if we deploy
the wrong strategy in today's environment, we become
worthless or go the way of the dinosaur...

so, today, we live in an environment that devalues us,
we live in a nihilistic world, and that can be directly
traced back to the modern Industrial Revolution...

which leaves us with the question, now what?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

now that we can connect the Industrial Revolution as
being one of the main factors contributing to the nihilism
of our age, we can see some of the things philosophically
that happened to combat that...

We can now see existentialism as being an attempt to
overcome this nihilism, of dehumanizing/devaluing
human beings.. the real target of Marx was the Industrial Revolution
which he saw as dehumanizing, devaluing human beings by
turning them into commodities...good only for the gaining
of either profits or information... in the Industrial Revolution,
human beings have no other value.. except for the seeking of money
or information....

the question becomes, how do we raise the value of human beings to
overcome this devaluation/dehumanization of human beings?

or we can say this, how do we defeat modern nihilism?
what will it take to create a state/society that no longer devalues
or dehumanizes people? How do we create a non-nihilistic world?
the fact of the matter is so bad, that we don't even have an
opposite word of nihilism... we live in a nihilistic world,
what word could we use to say the opposite of nihilistic?
that is how far down the rabbit hole we are... we can't even
come with a word opposite of nihilism.... in my thesaurus,
the antonyms of nihilism is allowance, approval, ratification...
pretty weak words.. it also admits other words like belief, faith,
obedience and optimism....

still pretty weak words for the opposite of nihilism...
how can we become something if we don't even have a word
for it?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

I think it odd that I feel like I am the only person around here who
actually engages with philosophy....and not polemics....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

I am spit balling here, so hang in there for moment...

we have that famous scientific experiment that says that
atoms are both waves and particle like properties....
light having a dual nature....

now to adapt that theory to human beings, we are both individual
discrete particles and wave like particles... discrete: individually separate
and distinct beings... and waves: a wave is a propagating dynamic
disturbance.... drop a rock into a still body of water and see the waves
move out from that initial rock drop.... we are part of that wave which
is not individual, discrete particles, but part of a wave, a collection
of particles moving more or less together...

so, let us put some meat on this bone... in philosophy, we have what I
call particles, philosophers who engaged in philosophy as people
being discrete and individual particles... Socrates for example,
was one such philosopher... his thought was about the one particular
person.. as a individual, discrete person, not as a group or a wave....
Kiekgaard also thought this way....his way of philosophy was about
the individual person, as a particular.. as did Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer...

but a philosopher like Marx, did not think about people as individual
particles.. he thought of people in terms of waves.. as being part
of some group or wave of people... so we can include into
this group of philosophers as Plato, Hegel, Spinoza... their
concern was not the individual, discrete person, but as a group,
as a wave...

so we can break up philosophy into two parts, those who thought of
people as individual, separate, discrete objects, and those who think
of people as a wave, as a group of people....and depending on the context,
we can label people either way... as discrete objects or as wave objects...
and we can be both if so designated, so in philosophy, we can think of
people as being both discrete, separate objects and/or as a collective wave..

and so we can point to part of philosophy's problems, as being
mixing and maxing the two parts, people as both discrete and wave like...
and we don't often say in which way we are talking about people,
as a wave or as a particle, or both... and because we ourselves are
unclear in which way we are thinking, we send confusing messages about
the philosophy we are advocating for.... is it the individual or is it
the group/wave that we are talking about? because human beings
can be both, and often at the same time...

Personally, I tend to think of people both in terms of being discrete objects
and in other ways, as collective/wave like, and so my own messaging gets
mixed up...usually, we can, by the context, figure out which field
we are talking about, people as particles or people as waves...
but not always......

Kropotkin