our milieu....

[Peter Kropotkin]

for most people around here engage in polemics,

Well, it's great that your threads avoid polemics.

K: and how is ''sepere aude" polemical?

Kropotkin

[Iwannaplato]

K: and how is ''sepere aude" polemical?

Yes, that part isn't polemical. Neither are the following:

for when was the last time
you heard a conservative speak hopefully about the future? the only
thing that will bring a conservative to being even vaguely hopeful
is the possible second coming.... other than that, the conservative wallows
about the mud and claims to be ''real'' about it....

fear dominates conservatives..... it drives their every action and thought....
and what does the conservative fear? Practically everything....
from education to democracy to theories like Marxism and CRT...
the list of things they fear is, by far, much larger than the things
they approve of.... every single hot button topic today is driven
by conservative's fear..... from abortion to immigration to education,
to gays/trans people....all of it, ALL OF IT, driven by fear.......

I can't even see anything positive in the conservative's message....
can you?

let us work out some examples of a journey gone wrong......

let us assume, as many people do, that the journey is to find god....
and then what happens if, if we actually do find god?

therein lies the rub.... nothing..... happens.... we wait until
we die to spend eternity in gazing at god..... we wait until
we die to spend eternity in gazing at god..... not much happening
there....we find god, happy, well some are happy, but the fact is
that sin is frankly more fun..... and thus the eternal struggle to
avoid sin...... and we spend our time sinning and then repenting,
and sinning and repenting and sinning some more, and repenting
some more..... so, what is actually happening? sin and repenting....
that pretty much covers our life.... not much of a journey there....
and then we are also waiting to die.... for the second chapter, for
a Christian, anyway, is far more interesting than the first chapter...
which is life... waiting for death is pretty much what a Christian does.....

and here you are certainly not trying to persuade people to your viewpoint:

but think of the other revolutions... the economic revolution,
both capitalism and communism/socialism came after the
Enlightenment.... as did democracy, and the rise of modern
philosophy with Kant and Hegel and all the others after that......
but we also had social revolutions, legal revolutions and political
revolutions... or have you forgotten that both the American revolution
and the French revolution occurred after the Enlightenment.....
and of course, the rise of the modern technological world came
after ''sepere aude''......

and think of the number of ism's that have arose since the Enlightenment...
from nationalism, to theism, white is right ism, the rise of civil right movements,
liberalism and conservatism...and as previously mentioned, all the political
isms of our day.....and does any of this occur without the influence of
the Enlightenment? I doubt it...... in many ways, some even under
the radar ways, our own civilization and society are what they are because
of the Enlightenment........

now, the question becomes, do we continue to follow this
''sepere aude'', dare to know, even further? it has been my
contention that we need to continue to engage in the Enlightenment,
we need to push hard this, ''dare to know'' even further and even harder.......
I would suggest that much of the world's problems today stem from
our not following the ''sepere aude'' to the end......

for me, the motto ''sepere aude'' can be and more importantly,
should be the motto of human beings...... ''sepere aude'' must
be part of human existence if we are to work our way back to solid
ground..

we must push ourselves to the end of the
Enlightenment process.... we must ''dare to know'' even if,
especially if, we find that human beings are not who we thought
they were......

And this certainly isn't polemical or, dare one notice, rude...

what does it mean to be a human being? you don't know because
you haven't given it 2 seconds of thought.... ''Dare to know''...

nor is this polemical

as long as we hold to the faith of childhood, without any type
of an ''reexamination of values'' another Auschwitz is
just around the next corner....

nor this

much of the world's reaction today can be summed up
by a saying that was very big 40 years ago....

''I have abandoned my search for truth and now I am looking
for a good fantasy'''

this pretty much sums up most people lives in these modern times.....
the search for the trinkets of existence is just a search for
a good fantasy..

nor is this, nor is there anything paradoxical about this...

there are some around here who proclaim the truth of god
and of religion... and in doing so, they have stopped seeking...
once one has the truth, there is no point to seeking the truth
anymore....

Nor despite the following are you engaging in an argument - which is when one presents a set of reasons for believe one view....

let us change the argument a bit.....

Some might naively point out that if one believes what you say here

we have seen,
on this very website, claims that others hold beliefs that
make them liberals, or terrorist or anarchist or traitors
or Atheist or at the very least, stupid.... and yet, this argument
requires that the person making the charge, is holding to
the ''right'' beliefs...you cannot call someone a traitor
unless you yourself hold to the ''correct'' beliefs.....

Then those earlier (totally not polemical) statements you made about conservatives or religion people taking the wrong journey would indicate that you hold the right beliefs. Since you were doing precisely what the people you are complaining about here, but with a different target.

But they don't understand that conservative polemical arguments are polemics. While your arguments and judgments aimed at others is daring to know.

Those are some of the reasons I don't consider, as I said I didn't, your thread here to be polemical.

[Peter Kropotkin]

Newton worked out gravity... but we can't accept it because
it is ''polemical'' and Einstein worked out the ''theory of relativity''
but it is ''polemical''... which was exactly what the Nazi's charged Einstein
with....his "Jewish'' physics.... and that the sun is 93 million miles
from earth... we can't accept that because that is ''polemical''...

we can call anything, ANYTHING, polemical.... all it takes
is the ability to spell polemical right....thank god I have
spellcheck.....

Kropotkin

[Iwannaplato]

Newton worked out gravity... but we can't accept it because
it is ''polemical'' and Einstein worked out the ''theory of relativity''
but it is ''polemical''... which was exactly what the Nazi's charged Einstein
with....his "Jewish'' physics.... and that the sun is 93 million miles
from earth... we can't accept that because that is ''polemical''...

we can call anything, ANYTHING, polemical.... all it takes
is the ability to spell polemical right....thank god I have
spellcheck.....

Kropotkin

So, let's look at the implied argument:
Some parts of Peter K.'s post were about, directly or implicitly, Newton and Einstein, and they were not polemical, and this means the Peter K. was not polemical in this thread. Any one calling him polemical is doing the same thing as when people said those two scientists were polemical.
Einstein's theory of relativity was accused of being polemical by the Nazis and this was not the case, so Peter K. could not have been polemical in this thread, in the parts I quoted. (note that there is nothing hysterical or polemical about Peter comparing my criticizing his posts as polemical with the Nazi's anti-Semitic attacks on Einstein)
'We can call anything polemical', so Peter K. can't be polemical in those parts of this thread I quoted.

Not sure what the spellcheck reference was about. Did I spell 'polemical' incorrectly?

Anyway: something is pointed out about what one is doing; one could 'dare to know' and explore this or one could dismiss this and not see if there is anything to it.

It seems the thread is in favor of 'Dare to Know!'

I know less about Newton's relations with his peers, but Einstein had ongoing interactions with peers where he not only used critique from others but sought out critique from others to help him develop his ideas.

Me: I think if one is going to criticize polemical posting, one should avoid polemics in one's posts, especially in the thread one is saying this. More importantly, if one examines why one actually was polemical, despite also believing this is the wrong approach, what were the motivations for doing it. Perhaps insights and more nuanced positions can be arrived at. Further, a greater understanding of your own motivations might give you insight into the people you are critical of. I cannot see how daring to know and gaining understanding could do anything but help in future posts and possible dialogue.

[Peter Kropotkin]

After a few, long days at work, I'm back....

the nature of our milieu today is exposed by the debate last night
between Biden and IQ45... I didn't see it, but I heard it was
a dark and dreary affair.... with lots of personal attacks....
which is the modern style of politics......and it was pretty much
a modern moment because it was all about being negative...
I doubt a positive word was spoken last night....

our times are being weighed down by the darkness and negativity
of our age....and I must ask why? why such negativity and despair
in our modern times? I suspect it's because people focus on the
tree's instead of the forest.... the individual trees of global warming
and inflation and war and the negative political forces that do the
negativity because they are invested in that and can profit from
that negativity.... who profits from the lightness of being?
as far as I can tell, no one...but in negativity, one can sell
guns and shelters and a highly paid police force, armies....
to be frank... from fear comes people buying crap to ''protect''
themselves and from optimism and hope, what do people buy?
our fear driven age is driven to sell people crap.... it is
a marketing tool, nothing more...

the question is not about bad things happening to people, the
question is about our general future..... is this coming future
more of the same darkness and fear and despair we see today
and have seen for decades or, OR do we try something that
hasn't been tried in a long time...... attempting the positive...
do we have problems, yes, but we don't have to make those problems
the focal point of our existence... the end all, do all of existence....
as we do today.......there is a relatively problem free existence
in our future..... we just have to build, work for that, believe in that......

however, if we remain tied down to this dark focus of all that
is bad and evil in our existence, instead of working toward
what is possible in our existence, we cannot move forward......
we cannot become who we are.... or said another way.....
the future is what we make of it... let us make it bright
and positive, instead of dark and heavy and full of despair....
like today.......

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

the question becomes, how do we come to embrace the light,
positive nature of who we are and of existence?

the isms of today, which ones are actually ones that embrace a positive
future? Well, certainly not capitalism... for that ism is about the
acquisition of goods and the achievements of empty forms......
the goal of capitalism is to gain wealth.... the underlying
motto of capitalism is... the private vices of human beings,
in some fashion never explained, create public benefits...
the private pursuit of wealth is supposed to create public benefits
for the entire society......so, explain to me how the vast wealth
of say, Elon Musk, creates public benefits for our society?

well, it creates jobs.... but that is an assumption that a job
is in some fashion, a benefit for someone.....
that we find our own fulfillment in existence by working in a job.....
and that is a huge assumption.... not supported by any type of facts.....
I would say that working in our modern age, within the big corporations
and the relentless pursuit of profits is not a positive, but a negative.....

for in this pursuit of wealthy, we no longer engage in what
makes us human..... or said another way, the pursuit of wealth
negates us as human beings.... for we no longer pursue that of real value,
of beauty, of love, of the connection between human beings...
those are the values that make live worth living, not the endless,
relentless pursuit of wealth/profits..... you might say, but
Kropotkin, how can we assume that the chase for profits is
a lower need than making a connection with our fellow human beings?

and that is the next post...

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we human beings have needs.... that of both bodily needs
and psychological needs..... the need for food, water, shelter,
health care, education... are some basic bodily needs....
and the psychological needs are the need for safety/security,
the esteem of others, a sense of belonging.... and important needs
indeed..... but the primary need for human beings is a connection
to other human beings..... for example, one of the primary needs of
human beings is love.... and the pursuit of love drives much of
human actions and experiences...... but what is love?
it is an attempt to reach a deeper connection with another....
love itself is just a very deep connection to another human being.....
a lot of the connections we make with others, are more, shall
we say superficial.... I have many types of connections to
things... baseball teams, food types, books, music.... we connect
with many different things in many different ways.....
and some of those connections are deeper than other connections.....
and because of that, we can walk away from some of our connections
pretty easily.... we can walk away from many jobs because the only
connection we felt was with the money they paid us and nothing else.....
we can walk away from friends because we either have lost the connection
we once felt to each other or that connection wasn't very strong to begin with.....

when one searches for a connection that is larger then themselves,
we often mean connecting to being part of something larger
than ourselves... the arm forces for example.... and much of
the advertising the Arm forces use to bring people into them
is to talk up this example of having a greater connection
with something larger than yourself.... this attempt
to have a larger connection to something... also brings
us to those who hold to belief in god or religions....
to hold to valuing the connection to god above the
the ''mundane'' connections of normal human beings.....

and in thinking about this.... we realize that our diverse
and many connections to others, have a degree to them....
some connections we hold are fairly light and easily forgotten...
some connections we hold to others is very deep and hard
to forget.... many of us, quite often remember our first love...
and why? Because for many, it was the first real, deep connection
we ever made... that deep connection impacted us in ways that
some still haven't realized or understood....that first love is something
that few ever forget and that is because of the connection made.....

I would argue that before our bodily needs, and
as part of the psychological needs of being human, lies our
need, as a primary human need, to connect to others.....
people, events, places, ideas and organizations.....

so, to revisit the idea of what it means to be human,
part of the answer lies in our needing to connect,
in a meaningful and impactful way, to connect to others....
that may be one way to describe what a human being is,
the need and desire to connect to others....
that act of connection is what makes us human......

so, let us view that act of connection to our isms....
that capitalism is about our connecting to money as
the primary connection to existence, is problematic
at best..... and one some level we know and understand this.....
wealth as a means of connection is a slight one at best.....
for wealth, the pursuit of wealth, dehumanizes and devalues
us as human beings.... and why? because it makes the pursuit
of wealth/profits, being a higher value than making connections....

and what connections can we make with money? with actual
bills? I cannot make a connection to someone with a green piece
of paper.... or any type of colorful piece of paper... they are just
pieces of paper.... nothing more.... and we human beings,
have due to indoctrinations, have made those colorful pieces
of paper to have greater value than making connections that
define our lives....

the point of existence, one of them, is not the pursuit of pieces of paper,
but to make connections.... to find love, and happiness
and to fulfill all those bodily and psychological needs,
begin with us making connections....

do you want to discover the meaning of life?

begin with the connections you have and, AND could have created
in the future....it is the connections we have that make us human....
and feeling alive and in becoming.... to become who you are, is
simply an act of connection.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and what of our senses? sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell....
how do those senses fit into this idea of connection?

As a deaf person, I have trouble connecting to people because
of my hearing loss.....I can't tell what they are saying.... and that
understanding is a connection... it is, in part, how we connect
to others... just as vision is another means to connect to others.....
as is taste and touch and smell......human beings mostly connect
to their environment and others, by sight or hearing... but animals,
such as dogs, connect to their environment by smell or taste....

we not only connect to each other, but we connect to our environment
by our senses....I feel ''out of touch'' with people because I can't hear them.....
Helen Keller once said that ''losing sight disconnects us from things,
losing our hearing disconnects us from other people""....
think about the way you connect to others...... what senses do you
use to connect to other people, places, ideas, events and activities?

Now comes the interesting part... is this need for connection a
mental, logical means or is it an emotional, feeling thing?
YES...... connections can be made by either operating
tool we human beings have.. either on the rational, reasoning side
of human existence or on the emotional, feeling side of human
experience... connections can be made by either side of
our means of understanding our universe.....

for rationality, reason, logic is simply another means of understanding
the universe...... as is the emotional, romantic side of existence....
understanding, connecting can be done on either side of the tools
of human existence..... rationality or emotionalism.....

properly understood, the basic point of human existence is to
connect too others, to the universe and connect to ourselves.....
and thus we now come to understand that saying I have made
in another post/thread....

that human beings have become problematic to ourselves...

and why is this? it is because we have lost our connection to ourselves
and to our environment.... and how do we reconnect to ourselves?

and that is the modern question.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and if our ''real'' nature, being is to connect, what
does this mean for our particular area of interest,
Philosophy?

Many of the traditional problems within philosophy go away.....
for example, the mind-body problem of Descartes, really doesn't
mean anything if the point of existence is to make connections....
but in some areas, we can use our need to connect to our benefit....
for example, in Aesthetics.... we can use our need to connect to
our search for beauty... for that is what Aesthetics means...
connecting to beauty.... of all kinds..... but
connecting doesn't have much benefit to say, logic.....

and what of metaphysics? to seek out what is after the physical?
to find out the metaphysical aspect of existence.....
and in some nature, connect to that.....there are some areas
of metaphysics that I don't personally connect to....
that of ''the beginning of existence"" is there a god?
or some ''higher'' power? as a philosopher, I find
that question one that devalues, dehumanizes us...
I want to find the value of human beings and
what they are possible of.... not what god might
find of value or of possible use...... the idea or search
for god takes me too far away from what it means to be human.....

human existence is about human beings and who they are and
what is possible for them... and it has nothing to do with
god or some connection to a ''supernatural'' existence.....
to make connections with human beings, by human beings
and for human beings...
any connections we make is with, by or for human beings....

and god or religions don't fit into this idea of connections.....

Kropotkin

[promethean75]

Thank u Ludwig Feuerbach.

[Peter Kropotkin]

Thank u Ludwig Feuerbach.

K: and how many here are familiar with Mr. Feuerbach?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

the rise of modern Atheism comes from our modern
inability to connect to the idea of Catholicism, for example...
or any type of religion for that matter......

look about the modern world.... what do you see?
what does our environment say about us?
I see skyscrapers and airplanes and roads that go on
forever...I live in a small suburb of San Fransisco....
and my vision is of condo's, (I live in one)
and of apartments and city hall and the library,
both of which is down the street from me....
and just out of sight, is a school....and in viewing this,
what connections do I see? the road in front of me is
a well-traveled road... and the nearby school, my daughter
went to back in the day... and the high school I went to is
about a mile away from me.... and my connection to that
high school, is not really there anymore.... I was there
over 40 years ago.... and I have no personal connection
to the nearby school outside the fact that my daughter went there.....

and therein lies the story of modern existence.... so much around
us, from building to schools to condo's/apartments.. lack any connection
to us......they are just objects we pass by every day... with no thought
or feeling like they mean something to us......

and we see this in our vision of god or religions...... we have
very little or even no connections to religions thousands of years old.....
I cannot imagine myself being a goat/sheep herder and that goat herder
cannot imagine my job of helping people scanning items like soft drinks
and apples into a scanner.... that most of our modern jobs/careers are
outside of the imagination of most people in the ancient/Medieval/
Rennaissance world.... it was not until the rise of the modern factory
could people imagine my job, which is a factory lite job....
and the question becomes, how do I connect to a religion
created by people who were goat/sheep herders?
even the morality described in the Bible is not something I
see..... of the ten commandments, how many has one of our
presidential candidates broken? most likely all ten....
and he has admitted to stealing and fornication outside of marriage...
and putting god second to his love of money....

NO, the morality of the past is gone and lost in the past....
which means what to us today? Every major Philosopher
since and including Nietzsche has tried to separate
morality from its heritage which is religious....
what is morality if we don't have a god?

therein lies the entire question of modern philosophy.....
on what basis do we form a connection to morality without,
without the benefit of belief in god? How can we be moral without
any sort of religious background? what does a secular morality
look like?
and what is our connection going to be to a secular morality?

questions for our age.... what does it mean to be human given
that either, god is dead or that god never existed?

what are our connections now, given this new reality?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

if our environment is vastly different, then shouldn't our connections
be different? how we connect to something, either with vision or
hearing or touch, changes with our environment..... but Kropotkin,
vision or hearing doesn't change..... and that is not true...
my hearing at birth was called severe to moderate hearing loss...
I lost what was left of my hearing after I turned 60..... the senses
change and quite often dramatically....

and clearly our environment has changed... today, the area
where I now live in, since 1973, has quite dramatically changed....
this area I live in has so dramatically changed that I have lost
much of the connection to it that I once had....and what are
connections? Most connections are emotional connections....
much of what remains the same are really buildings and roads,
infrastructure stuff... and how much of a connection can we
develop with infrastructure? Unless we have some weird
connection with a bridge, perhaps someone we know died
on that bridge, we have no connections to infrastructure...
and most of what remains over any given area is infrastructure......

and people? I have virtually no friends from my high school days still
around here... there are very few people from my past that are still
in my life...and thus to most people I know, I have very little
connection to them because most people I know are mostly just
acquaintances...

and thus it goes into old age.... the people that we once knew, have
either moved away or are dead....... as we grow older, little by
little, we lose our connections to the people around us....
until we are left with a spouse, if we are lucky... next Friday is my 28 year
wedding anniversary.... and I don't have any once in my life with
whom I have spent more time with, outside of my brothers/sisters/
mother..... and as we age, family connections become far more important.....

life could be said to consist of making connections as we are young,
and as we age, we begin to lose those connections until
we are left with few if any connections....

what is the human condition? making and losing connections....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

in one very real sense, our political crisis is one of connections......

that we have lost our connection to our political infrastructure is clear....
the distrust many have toward our political infrastructure has been
going on for a while and yet, another thing we can blame on
''St. Ronnie''... His attacks on the government has lead to our
dissatisfaction of our government....

He said and I quote:

''.. the nine most terrifying words in the English Language are:
I'm from the government and I'm here to help. A great many current
problems on the farm were caused by government-imposed embargoes
and inflation, not to mention government's long history of conflicting
and haphazard policies'''

Which in fact is not true.... the government while occasionally wrong,
is often the reason that big business doesn't run over both farms and
consumers...... what is forgotten is that pure capitalism was tried in
America... from about 1870 to 1910.... America tried pure capitalism.....
and it was such a disaster that Roosevelt was elected to overcome
this capitalism...and we can count as part of the great successes
of the 20th century being the role of government in rise
of America over the last 120 years... we are a superpower not despite
our government but because of our government....

but because of the pernicious and harmful comments like Uncle Ronny
comments, we have lost our connection to the government...
and in doing so, we risk losing our country..... for the strength
of any country comes from the strength of the government....
the ability to ''get shit done'' is what civilizations and states
are all about...and that is only possible through the role
the government plays in that state/civilization.....

the strength of any civilization comes from the strength of
the state... seek out any one of the strong civilizations
that have arisen during the last 5000 years and the commonality
of those strong and powerful states was the ability of the state
to ''get shit done'' Rome became a superpower because it had
the strongest state in Europe at that time......and that was
based on its ability to build roads, buildings, aqueducts, and
to maintain an army..... all of which required a strong government....
a superpower nation is only a superpower because of the strength
of its government....

and America was a superpower during the 20th century because, not
despite, but because of its government ability to ''get shit done''....
and if we do, as conservatives demand today, to dismantle the
infrastructure and institutions of our government... our state
and civilization will become history... America as a superpower
will end, once we take down or weaken the government....

the government is not the problem, it is the solution.....
the answer to the question: what makes America a superpower?
and what makes any country a superpower? the strength of
its govenment.....

Kropotkin

[attofishpi]

Kropotkin,

No matter how much of a genius you want to be considered...continually talking to yourself is only going to retire you into a mental asylum (once the middle management of a supermarket lets you go).