Philosophy Now Forum

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 12:06 am

Age wrote: ↑Sun Jul 07, 2024 12:02 am

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Sat Jul 06, 2024 8:52 pm

K: I like holding/reading heavy/big books..... It is pretty common
for me to read 500 to 800 page books.. I like the feel and texture
of books...I tried Kindle once and hated it with a passion....
so, no thanks...

Kropotkin

This might explain why you do not read the replies here, on a screen.

K: No, I just don't read your replies...

Kropotkin

Yet, 'you' did just read 'my reply'.

Could it be these sorts of things that you say, and claim are true, why you get caught out lying here?

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Sat Jul 06, 2024 6:44 pm and now we face the second part of my question, how do we compare
and contrast the Russian example, to America? Can we use some of
these Russian questions to help us understand what it means to be
an American?

Whatever the differences, as it turns out, they have this in common. They are both superpowers in comprising two of the dumbest populations on the planet; there are exceptions, of course, that's inevitable. But as default, I can't think of two more so-called educated nations who exceed them where stupidity of a very dangerous kind is concerned. The masses in both are brain-dead, making whatever other differences exist less relevant.

Betty Carter

Horace Silver

And now we face the second part of my question, how do we compare and contrast the Russian example to America? Can we use some of these Russian questions to help us understand what it means to be an American?

You are barking up the wrong tree.

as the question was for the Russians, what path into the future
should they take, being westernized or becoming Slavic/Russian,
after the Napoleonic War, the invasion of Russia in 1812,
the answer was to become ''Russian''...

Many Russians including Dostoevsky believed, truly believed that Mother
Russia had a Messianic destiny.... to lead a corrupt and diseased world
into purity and untaintedness..... this messianic belief drove much of
Russian thought before 1917... and indeed, it could be part of the
reason for the strength of the belief in communism as being
another aspect of leading the world away from corruption and sin...
as communism was considered to be less corrupted than
capitalism... less sin in communism than capitalism...

A similar divined ordained belief also resides in America...
beginning with the Manifest destiny ideology of the 19th century
and still exists today in the idea of American exceptionalism.....
this similar messianic belief in America drives much of the rhetoric
in America today.... Indeed, the old idea of America being the
''city on the hill'' originally derives from a religious context.....
a sermon by Puritan John Winthrop on March 21st, 1630.....
and derives from Jesus's ''sermon on the mount''....

and this leads us to another track in America.... the demarcation
line between religion and the secular... so, we have as a
conservative slogan being the idea of America, with the slogan
''god, country and guns''...so, we not only have the idea of
the national split being between the urban vs the country, but
the spilt between the religious and the secular....which has
a very strong urban vs country tone to it....but once again,
I am referring to tendencies.....Perhaps the most religious
group in America today are African-Americans... who tend
to make up a large part of the urban population.....the African-American
community has its own battles to fight.... if the right were right,
and they rarely are, but let us take them at their word that
it is the blacks that are driving the chaos and ''sin'' of America,
how does the black community reconcile this with their religious
ideal? it seems to me, being an outsider of course, that the
conflict in the African-American community is a conflict between
their economic reality and their religious aspirations....

and this leads us back to the question, what vision should we take
into the future? at this point, I am not answering as much as I am
asking questions....

so, what is the answer?

Kropotkin

another question: what does the role of inertia play in history?
Our history? American history?

Inertia: a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged....
Physics: the property of matter by which it continues in its existing
state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state
is changed by an external force....

rarely if ever, is this concept applied to the state/society/civilization.....
a state/society tends to maintains a straight line, or has the tendency
to do nothing.... even if doing something is beneficial to those people....

a good rule of the thumb is that the larger group of people,
the less likely that group will do anything other than travel a
already chosen straight line.... groups, especially large groups
need a really, really good reason to act.... and even then,
they might lack the will to do something.....

if there was a theory of society or the state... it is this...
that the primary source of knowledge about that society or state
is inertia.... it will remain the same unless there is some overriding
reason to act... that the French Revolution occurred tells us how bad
the situation in France really was..... what it took for the masses to
act in their situation.......to change.... and the same is true for the
Russian Revolution..... how terrible it was for Russia, before they
actually, began to act.... inertia is the primary way to understand
a state or a society.... it won't do anything unless something
prompts that movement.... and we see this in America today.....
Inertia is the basic way a state or society operates...
there is no movement or change unless it is really needed....

Now we approach the conservative motto... that what must
be followed is tradition, history, culture, heritage.... which is really
another way to justify inertia... because it is traditional, we don't need
to move or make any changes..... following history, or tradition is a
way to practice inertia.... why change because if it was good enough
for our fathers, it is good enough for me and us......

the question becomes before us is this, are the conditions we face bad enough
for us to engage in change... to overcome inertia?
and liberals say yes.... conservatives say, never..... it is never bad enough
for us to engage in change or to end following tradition... ...

but once again, we follow Russian history and we see the closer
and deeper they practice tradition, the more unstable the
Russian state/society became....

but why was that? it is because for a state or society to meet
the challenges of its time, it must also be ready, willing and able
to change even change its fundamental principles......
failure to change, to adapt to the every changing environment,
means a state, society cannot and will not be unable to
overcome its challenges....

to practice conservatism, means one is engaged in inertia...
and that means that the state is unable to change to meet
new challenges... and the bottom line here is that the only
choice to meet these new challenges is to move forward...
to practice liberals practices... of science, of reasoning,
of thinking about the future more than the past....

the answer for the soul of America is by liberal values...
for they alone allow us to move forward... for conservative
values of ''god, country and guns'' prevent us from movement because
those values of ''god, country and guns''' are not values of movement,
of change.... they are the values of inertia.....
and we cannot overcome our current challenges with inertia....
we must act and inertia itself is designed to prevent action....

Or tell me, how do we overcome the ill effects of income inequality with
inertia? How do we overcome global warming with inertia? How do we
overcome declining resources with inertia? I am truly interested in how
we can overcome our problems by doing nothing.....

Kropotkin