Philosophy Now Forum

we have in philosophy a mandate, to be logical,
rational, scientific, to be "philosophical"...

and that is right and good, but there is another side of human beings
and that side is that vast undiscovered country called the
"unconscious". Freud brought this side of us to life, but we know
that side from ART, literature, paintings, plays, poems that have
been created since man began to walk the savanna of Africa...

the period called Romanticism is one long rumination on
the "unconscious" and we best heed that story, but Romanticism is
a story with no ending...

as I have mentioned before, we are unable to move philosophy
to its "completion" until we find a home, a space for the "unconscious mind"
in philosophy.... in philosophy proper, we find the first people to
make use of the unconscious mind with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche..

to make sense of that story, we have to understand society and the state
in relation to a book, "Hero with a thousand faces" by Joseph Campbell....

Think about the long march of humanity... the millions upon millions
who have gone before us...the vast majority of them, have stayed
within the rules, followed the prevailing wisdom, obeyed the law...
The vast majority of people have simple marched in lock step with
millions of other people as they were born, lived and died...

but for some, some, the goal wasn't to march hand in hand with the
masses, but to travel on some journey.. to become as Campbell said,
to become a hero.....intended or not....ancient times had story after
story after story about the hero and their road to becoming a hero...
From Oedipus to Jason and the Golden fleece to the Buddha, to Daedalus
to ST. George the dragon slayer, to Jesus... all of them, all of them,
having taken a journey into becoming a Hero....
and those who are hero's have didn't walk hand in hand with the masses,
be one with the herd... no, the hero walks alone on some journey that
has no directions or google map to find it..

Nietzsche, in his own way, was creating a hero story with his
"ubermensch" as was Kierkegaard, "the crowd is untruth"
and the hero would agree with that assessment...

What is lost in the world today is this idea of a hero's journey...
to journey into darkness and defeat the dragon, and then just
as importantly, return to the world, where the hero provides wisdom
and knowledge...communism is just as much a failure as capitalism
in that it demands that we march in lock step with each other and find,
what exactly? Within capitalism, we can only find more of the same..
of the trinkets that we started with, money, fame, titles, power, material
goods... capitalism doesn't provide us with any movement of any kind...
in capitalism, one doesn't slay any dragons or become wise or gain
any type of valuable knowledge of what it means to be human...
your only reward in capitalism is a paltry one, money.. and money
is, at best, a temporary solution....money has no permanence of any kind...
and it can't buy any type of permanence... for material goods and houses
and cars and fancy TV's are all of the moment, temporary.. "ad hoc"...

but what that which human beings do search for, what things will
we journey for? Love... to find love, one will travel all over heaven
and earth.....but is love permanent? is love something that we can touch,
feel, taste, smell or hear? no.... love has no physical presence...
it is an emotion.. it is also part of every single human being DNA..
for we need love as much as we need food and water and shelter....

and the journey to finding love is a long one.. I didn't find lasting love
until I was 32...and today I have been married for 26 years... and until
philosophy can account for love, it has no value for us... until we
can place love into context with what it means to be a human,
we cannot think of philosophy as anything but incomplete...

so, as yourself, am I ready to break with my fellow human beings
and attempt to make a journey into being a hero? Man, human beings
are already on a journey.. from going from animal to animal/human
to become fully human...

in fact, it is safe to say that life is not a mission to gain wealth or power
or titles or fame.. but to find something far more profound and deeper...
Apocalypse Now... is one man's journey into the soul... but our
individual journey doesn't have to be so, obvious and direct.....

what is your journey? are you just traveling with the herd,
hoping for wealth or power or material goods.. or are you
prepared to suffer for your journey.. a journey in which you
might, in fact, you most likely will fail and yet, you are not
slowed down in this deep need of yours to become.....

Kropotkin

and one might think, but Kropotkin, a Hero?
WTF... Shitty hours and terrible pay....
and that is how dreams die.... by comparing it
to the mass idea of who we are... with our focus
on being good little workers, producers and consumers...
who has time to follow their dream when it is so much
easier to be part of the crowd and seek the vanities
of life, money, fame, power, titles and material goods...

now some here might mistake what I say and believe that
they are a hero.. by not engaging in in the mass dream/illusion
of wealth, fame, power, titles and material goods....

they might believe that they are a hero by not engaging in the mass
trappings of the GDP... but being a hero isn't just about taking
a route not taken, it is about becoming something... and in
that becoming, learning, discovering what it means to be
a man, a human being, an American....

a hero has a message once he/she returns from their journey....
think of Luke Skywalker... he returned and did he just sit
on ass contemplating his navel? No.. he began to teach,
to teach the ways of the Jedi....and that is certainly one
path of the return from the journey...think
of the path of hero's and teaching their insights about
what it means to be a hero...and in becoming...

Kropotkin

think of two such hero's journey....

Jesus and the buddha....

do either one ever talk about the bottom of the pyramid?
the gathering/seeking of food, water, shelter, education,
health care? No, not at all... they weren't concerned with
the basics of human existence, the animal side of us being
human... if you ask yourself, is being human about seeking
the basics of human existence, food, water, shelter....?
then you are not on the journey... you are just existing...

and if you engage with the higher, slightly higher focus on
the psychological aspect of human existence,
of seeking love, belonging, acceptance, safety/security,
esteem.. which is just as important as the physical side of
human existence, but the journey isn't about seeking or
finding these basic needs... Jesus doesn't talk about
getting the basics and neither does the Buddha...

read them and see what a man on a journey is thinking about...
reaching beyond the physical, reaching beyond our daily needs of
food and water and shelter.... in one sense, they aren't even talking
about the soul's needs.. they are engaged in a higher purpose of
the question of "what does it mean to be human?"

the question of being human is far more than an engagement
with our seeking our daily bread.... it is a question of what it
means to be human and what is the next step of our journey....

do we just settle into being animal/human and wrestle with each other
about such unimportant matters/ego matters as in wealth,
fame, material goods, titles, power....such transitory and brief
things, ephemeral things that are here today and gone tomorrow....

to spend our days in seeking food, water, shelter, education and other
such matters is to be an animal... is that what you want or desire in life?
to be an animal all your life? Does Jesus or the Buddha ever say, seek
out food and water and the other basics of existence? Be an animal
your entire existence? No, no they do not.....

we find out what it means to be human in an engagement with
the higher questions of existence, who are we, what am I to do,
what should I believe in, what can I hope for.. among the other Kantian
questions...

the journey is to go from animal, to animal/human to finally
becoming human, fully human..... and what path do we take
to make this happen? what is our road to becoming human?

Kropotkin

or think about ART, literature, plays, poems, novels,
paintings....does ART and the other creative actions/activities,
focus on seeking the basics of existence? the seeking of food,
water, shelter, education? No, all those things, ART and the like
is an attempt to bring our gaze to something far more important
than the mere animal existence of seeking the basics of existence...
to look up... to see existence from an eagle's viewpoint....
as we should do....even religions, attempt to raise our
vision to becoming something other than just animal...

do you want to be a "hero" than the path is clear...
don't just focus on the animal side of existence..
but try to raise yourself to become something more than
a means to acquire just food, water, shelter, education....

Kropotkin

In our journey, from being animal to becoming human,
I am reminded of the Zen saying, which I have mentioned here
before.... before Zen, the mountains were solid and fixed,
the seas calm as a mirror and the river sweetly flowed down
its banks... but during Zen, the mountains danced, and the sea
was wild and unpredictable and the river overflowed its bank...
and after Zen, the mountains were calm once again,
and the sea as smooth as a mirror and the river flowed
down its banks again....

in my own life, I have been rocked, intellectually by books and plays
and novels and poems that have put me into the middle Zen part of
where the mountains danced and the sea was wild and the river overflowed
it banks..

and afterwards, afterwards, I wasn't the same person I was before Zen...
the mountains were solid and the seas were tame and the river flowed
as it did before, but I was seeing those mountains and seas and rivers
with new eyes, with a new vision and viewpoint....

the fact of the matter is during the journey, we become totally different
people because of the Zen nature of understanding... those people who
are the same all their lives, they haven't grown or changed which means
they are stuck within their lives... they are the same their entire lives..
whereas those people who have experienced Zen moments, they are
different.. to say it another way, after Zen, we become different people,
our old selves die in true moments of Zen or of intellectual challenge that
changes our perspective of what it means to be human...

to put some flesh on this point, I recall reading Nietzsche..
and my eyes were open to new, even dangerous possibilities of
becoming human.... and during this time of Zen, I was dazed
and confused.. nothing seemed to be right and I was bewildered
by the new possibilities shown by Nietzsche... the mountains danced
and the sea was wild and unpredictable and the rivers overflowed their
banks... and within that, the old Kropotkin, he died and was replaced..
not physically but within his beliefs and values and understanding...
I was no longer the child Kropotkin, but I was an adult Kropotkin...
with new views, values and understanding of what it meant to be
human.... such is the nature of one journey we/I might take...
this overcoming, isn't about slaying dragons or killing the evil emperor..
but about slaying that which we grew up with, with the values
and beliefs of our childhood, our family, the state and society within
we grew up with..... I overcome the values and indoctrinations of my
childhood and become something new... the old Kropotkin was dead,
long live the new Kropotkin.... until the next overcoming, the next
Zen moment of my/our lives,... and how many overcoming's do we
have as human beings? I wish I knew, but it is as many as it takes...

have you taken your journey?

Kropotkin

we tend to think of "journeys" as a physical act, an activity,
but the reality is that we can take a journey without actually
going anywhere... we can take mental and psychological
and emotional journeys as well as a physical journey...
In fact, I would argue that most people engage in these
type of journey's far more than any physical type of journey's....

think about the journey from animal to becoming animal/human
to finally becoming fully human... that isn't a physical journey,
but a mental, psychological and emotional journey... it is an journey
within us that make us human, not a journey that takes us from America
to England... in our overcoming we are taking a journey that has
little to do with actual movement.... it is a journey of the mind,
the soul, emotions and our psychological needs and wants...
the most important journey we can take, can happen with us
just sitting on our couch....

Kropotkin