the education of Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

Today, we tackle another problem...

that of finding wisdom/in light of philosophy...

''The Greek word for ''I know'' is ''oida'' and is the perfect
of the verb ''to see'' and means ''I have seen''.. He who knows is
the man who has seen, who has had a vision.''
(from the book Irrational Man by William Barrett)

Wisdom is directly related to "seeing"... to see the truth...
but the question becomes, how do we "see" the truth?
As usual, I will use myself as an example, over these many years,
I have been "awakened" by writers or philosophers.... the book,
"Irrational Man" is one of those books that help me drop the scales from
my eyes.... I saw new truths and these new truths shook me to the core
of my being....other books that have shaken me are "The Education of
Henry Adams" and ''Report to Greco'' by Nikos Kazantzakis and
"The Outsider" by Colin Wilson... and after reading these books,
I saw things, life, experiences, everything differently....
I gained wisdom by seeing things and ideas differently....
The "Education of Kropotkin" came about when I saw things
and ideas differently.....my old ideas/visions of what it meant
to be human changed after these books... I had a new vision
of what it meant to be human.....the old education of Kropotkin,
of values and ideas that were driven into me since childhood,
lost their value to me....I grew as a person and as a philosopher,
by seeing life in a new way....but what would have happened if
I was so "married" to the old vision, the old way of seeing things/life
that I wasn't able to change? I would be called an ''Conservative"
because that is what it means to be a Conservative... to hold onto
the education of one's childhood regardless of what new evidence
or facts come to light....I had the courage to see life/ideas in
a new light, a new vision.... I was able to see...

I have changed my basic political position three times in my life,
over roughly 40 years.. about every 15 years or so, I have changed
my political position and over 40 years, I have changed my
philosophical positions a dozen times...
and with each change, with each new position, I gain wisdom,
knowledge, understanding... within my experience, my wisdom,
I can see, because I was once a "good Nietzschean" and truly
believed that I too was an "Ubermensch" and above all those
common mob/masses....until I realized that being a "Ubermensch"
meant rising above oneself, not the crowd, or the masses,
but rising above yourself, in overcoming oneself was the point
of being an "Ubermensch" the battle is to overcome yourself,
not in overcoming the crowd or the masses....
and the truth, as it often does, allow me to be free..

or said another way, I was taking more steps along the road
to wisdom, and there is no final destination in becoming "wise",
there is just a road to take... and to some, I am a dunce and to
others, I am a genius, a visionary.... but none of that matters,
all that matters is the road I am taking to gain wisdom,
a road that will take me a lifetime... a road that I can only
travel by learning to see what it means to be human....
and I see much differently about what it means to be human today,
than I did 20 or 30 years ago... and that is wisdom... and
that is the "Education of Kropotkin", learning to see differently...

Kropotkin

[Alexis Jacobi]

A wide range of interesting ideas and self-revelation. Seeing is also a laden notion in my thought …

You may have come across this (William Blake):

This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.