questions of philosophy.....

[Peter Kropotkin]

We have and I personally have gotten away from the important
questions of philosophy.....

''What should be done?" ''How are we to live"" ''Why are we here?"
''What must we be and do?"

and much of what we study fails to even acknowledge these questions...
History for example, has no interest in these vital questions... as history
just reports the ''facts'' whatever they may be... that Napolean crowned
himself Emperor on December 1804....... and how does this ''fact'' help
us with those vital questions of existence?
Or how does Math or Geology, helps us understand what ''we are supposed
to do?''

Those around here engage in polemical questions, trying to convert people
to a certain point of view... not actually engaging in the real questions
of philosophy... how does rewriting Marx, as several around here do,
help us get to the questions of ''how are we to live?"......around here,
polemics has replaced actual philosophy..... and for a time, I forgot
that...... but those polemics only point is to get us to forget
the real purpose of philosophy...... ''what does it mean to be human?"
and other related questions......

or said another way, Philosophy meaning is to be a ''way of life''...
to guide us into the future... and that point of Philosophy
being ''a way of life'' has been truly lost.... ''what are we to do?''
as a ''way of life?" and the American dream of wealth, power, fame,
material possessions, and titles... are all chimerical values designed
to get us to forget the important questions....

The right has put those chimerical values, or trinkets as I have
called them, first and foremost as THE values to pursue....
and the right engages in polemical attacks against any who oppose
these ''primary'' values of America..... as seen here on this website....

Marx was wrong in his belief that the substructure of human existence
is economics..... for that is the primary value of America.... that
the key path of existence is economic...that the pursuit of wealth is
the only object of human existence, at least according to those
those on the right....and quite wrong.....

''what are we to do?" ''What are we to believe in?" ''What can we know?"
''How should we live?" ''How are we to treat one another?" ''What makes
life worth living?"

and in these questions comes from every single aspect of philosophy,
of metaphysics, of ethics, of epistemology, of Aesthetics,
of logic, of political philosophy....

and if we are engaged in polemics, the art of convincing someone
to take sides, that is taking us away from the real discussion,
which are the questions of existence......

''What are we?" ''What are we to do?" ''What should we believe in?"
''How should one live?" ''What can we know?" among some of the
primary questions of life/philosophy that we should be engaged in,
not polemics....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

as every single question of philosophy, ''What am I to do?" is also
a question for a society, for all....""What are we to do?"

and here is where the right fails...... ''what are we to do'' about,
say homelessness or starvation, the right says, nothing, every
man for him/herself... the right inevitably disconnects questions
of ethics, ''what should we do?" from a state/society.... it becomes
an individual question, not a society question.... ''What are we to do?"

Does the state/society have any obligations to the homeless or starving
people in that state/society? the Right says no, the left says yes.....
''what are we to do?" ''What are we to believe in?" ''What is the right thing
to do?" ''Do human beings have any obligations to each other?"
and Jesus, has strong views about this point.... ''I am my brothers keeper?"
and that we have a moral obligation to feed the poor.... and the best
way to feed the poor is by governmental actions....does the state/society
have an obligation to feed the poor? According to Jesus, yes.....
but as usual, the right edits out, rewrites the words to mean
something else.... that what ails a society can only be fixed by
our own individual actions, and that is clearly wrong....
no matter, how hard I try, I cannot fix the homelessness problem
in America.... it will take all of us to solve that problem and the right
has no interest in universal solutions to our problems...

and yet, the history of the human race is one of tribes, for a million
years, human beings were tribal.. and within a tribe, we took care
of each of each other... that was the society, state at the time....
and within that, we took care of each other.... the history of the human race
is one of where we are/were tribal and took care of each other.....

and what is the modern day state/society? nothing but a larger tribe....
the concept of tribes hasn't change one bit... it has just grown larger...
the concept of Americans is just a large tribe....and Kropotkin, what
about race as being about tribes? the question of race has no more bearing
on us..... because as those DNA testing shows, that we are not just one tribe,
but made up of many, many diverse tribes.... my own testing shows that
I am part black, and partly Ashkenazi Jew, part Native American and mostly
English/Irish.... and I am, these days anyway, pretty straight forward in
my DNA testing...so which ''tribe'' do I belong to?" We cannot, today anyway,
think of ourselves by race or tribe, because that means nothing... the statement,
''I am white'' has very little validity... because no one is purely Caucasian....

This leads us to the question, ''What are we to do?" In terms of tribes,
as being about Americans, as that is the only real way, we can see ourselves
as given the balkanization of tribes... of there being no real sense of
race or color or religion that is ''pure''...... that of a tribe that is pure....
those days are long gone...... our tribal understanding will grow ever
so larger.... from being white or Catholic to being an American....or Russian....
and the smaller tribal mentality will disappear... much to the displeasure of
the right..... who can only focus on smaller tribes, of some purity that no
longer exists....

''So what are we to do?" well, what is the answer?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

that there seems to be two diverse and separate value
systems, one is private, personal and the other is public...
that the right holds to the private, personal value system
as being primary and that the left holds to the public value
system.... (this is not 100% accurate, but close enough for
government work)

the philosophical questions that should engage us,
''What are we to do?" ''What should we believe in?"
''What am I to be?" ''What can I/we believe in?"

these vital questions take both an individual aspect
and a collective aspect....the right take these questions
individually and the left take them collectively....

''What am I to do, given I exists within a collective aspect of a state/society"
that would be a liberal question.....

but given that the history of the human race is written collectively,
that we exist within a collective society, a collective state, that
we can only meet our needs collectively....that without a state/society
I cannot meet either my bodily needs or my psychological needs....
I need a state/society to find love, to find esteem, to find safety/security,
to meet my needs for food, water, shelter, education, health care....
it is only in a state/society that we can do what all human beings can do,
which is meet our needs... that is what evolution has done for us....
make us social, which means we can only survive within a social, collective,
tribal means......

this means the questions of existence that we face, these are collective,
social questions that involved the state/the society..... they cannot
be answered individually or alone.....''What am I to do?" is a collective
question that requires us to answer in collective terms, within a state/
or a social function....

and once again, this leads us to rejecting the right wing idea that we can only
find solutions to such problems as starvation and homelessness, individually...
by ourselves.... without a state/or society......

so, I ask collectively, ''What am I/we to do?" as a collective problem of
philosophy? or perhaps, ''What can I believe in?" collectively....
or ''What am I/we to be?" collectively, socially?
''What does it mean to be human?" collectively, socially?

Kropotkin

[Harbal]

''So what are we to do?" well, what is the answer?

Kropotkin

You do what you like, Kropotkin, but I intend to carry on as normal.

[Peter Kropotkin]

''So what are we to do?" well, what is the answer?

Kropotkin

You do what you like, Kropotkin, but I intend to carry on as normal.

K: but why? you are acting ''normally'' which is great, but
without questioning why? and I must ask, what is ''normal?"

Maybe, normal for you is to have sex with sheep and then eating them?
and maybe my normal is just as weird for you?

the question becomes this..... why are we doing what we do,
why do we hold these believes and values?

what I am calling for is a ''revaluation of values'' which is simply
where one looks at their being, doing and believing and asking,
is this really what I should be being, doing or believing?
what standards am I using to justify my being, doing or believing?

Kropotkin

[Harbal]

''So what are we to do?" well, what is the answer?

Kropotkin

You do what you like, Kropotkin, but I intend to carry on as normal.

K: but why? you are acting ''normally'' which is great, but
without questioning why? and I must ask, what is ''normal?"

Maybe, normal for you is to have sex with sheep and then eating them?

In that case, perhaps I'd better just carry on as usual, then.

what I am calling for is a ''revaluation of values''

Why, what's wrong with my values?

[Peter Kropotkin]

You do what you like, Kropotkin, but I intend to carry on as normal.

K: but why? you are acting ''normally'' which is great, but
without questioning why? and I must ask, what is ''normal?"

K: Maybe, normal for you is to have sex with sheep and then eating them?

H: In that case, perhaps I'd better just carry on as usual, then.

what I am calling for is a ''revaluation of values''

H: Why, what's wrong with my values?

K: are your values, whatever they maybe, really your values or
as with most people, you just simple adapt the values you were
indoctrinated with, from family, church, state, media, society,
with no real thoughts as to: are these values which I have,
are they really my values or just values I was indoctrinated with?

have you thought through the values you hold and what they mean
if you were to actually practice those values? For example, most
people simply practice whatever ethics/morals they were taught with,
giving no thought as to what it means to hold those values?

an example are those who are Anti-Abortion.... and yet, most of them,
if not all of them are pro capital punishment..... if life is sacred, as they
claim, they should also be demanding the end of capital punishment along
with an end to abortions, but they are quite silent about capital punishment...
suggesting to me they don't actually give a crap about a ''sacred life''
and more turn on the abortion issue as a political issue... one issue
in which they can tell people what to do, how do live, what one can
believe in.... it is power that the anti-abortion crowd is about, not
how sacred life is.... due to this complete silence about capital
punishment....

but an honest evaluation about one's values, we hope, will lead one
to the clear and obvious understanding that to be anti-abortion is
a fake, phony value.... unless one is arguing that life, all life in
all situations is sacred, they are practicing hypocrisy....
but we can't get there until we have a reevaluation of values...
an honest, brave reevaluation... something the right is quite afraid
of doing....

and that is the value of philosophy..... to get us to an understanding of
our values and what they actually mean..... if put into practice.....

Kropotkin

[Dubious]

Where would philosophy be if we didn't ask the same questions endlessly!

[Peter Kropotkin]

Where would philosophy be if we didn't ask the same questions endlessly!

K: and feel free to tell me the answers to those ''same questions
endlessly!?''

the point is one of two things... either we have failed to ask
the right questions, or there are no answers to those questions....

you tell me.....

but there is a third option....


Kropotkin

[Dubious]

Where would philosophy be if we didn't ask the same questions endlessly!

K: and feel free to tell me the answers to those ''same questions
endlessly!?''

the point is one of two things... either we have failed to ask
the right questions, or there are no answers to those questions....

you tell me.....

but there is a third option....


Kropotkin

Very simple! For some questions, there are NO answers. Why must everything have an answer? To presume that is itself a fallacy, one centered in hubris! Once that's realized we wouldn't, ad infinitum, be asking the same unresolvable questions which neither have nor ever will conclude except in some low probability verdict which only obfuscates but never resolves. Questions ending with a perpetual question mark ( ) are the least important of all the questions ever asked, which is also the reason so much of philosophy is plain useless and merely a matter of unceasing speculation.

A perennial example of such is whether god exists. Is there any reason we should care! We now have problems never faced before; none of which, even the most deadly, are ever going to be resolved or ameliorated by any supposed entity whose existence amounts to nothing more than supposition to a question that can never yield a response beyond conjecture...but still we keep conjecturing!

...but since you mention it, care to spell out the 3rd option?