Philosophy Now Forum

we know, at least we should know what philosophy
is about, and understand, again, at least we should
understand what politics is about... but let
us define politics just in case someone is unclear....

Politics: the activities associated with the governance of
a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict
among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power....

to achieve power... and I have mentioned that power is
one of those things that has led us down the wrong path...
it is a trinket that leads only to itself, like money or
titles or material possessions.... the trinkets that can only
led us too more of the same, not anything new...
it is an empty value.. basically just empty calories...
that fill us up but does nothing in the way of keeping us
healthy...

politics is, for the most part, just ''ad hoc", of the moment...
we need to fill the potholes on route 66 or rebuilding the
schools or raise the taxes to pay for teachers....
that sort of stuff....the day to day stuff that demands
our attention, but it is rarely ever life threatening...
it is kinda like us having to do errands every day...
nothing important but if we fall behind, we have
to play a lot of catchup...

and what is the big stuff in politics? the two questions
of political affairs revolves around two questions,
one, who makes the rules and second, who pays for it?
that is, in essence, politics writ large...

but within politics, we have a second goal to achieve..
a more subtle goal... what is the end game? What are we trying
to do? what is the goal of politics?

we have ideals that we talk about all the time, freedom,
justice, being... according to one site:

in social studies, a political ideology is a certain set of ethical
ideals, principles, doctrines, myths or symbols of a social movement,
institution, or large groups that explain how society should work
and offers some political and cultural blueprints for a certain
social order....

and that is the second aspect of politics... as a political
and cultural blueprint of how a society should work....
the cultural wars of the last 40 plus years is one such
blueprint... from the standpoint of the right, the goal
of the cultural wars to homogenize the state/society...
to look the same way, to believe in the same beliefs,
to pray to the same gods, to love a certain gender,
to make society and the state, a political version
of the "Stepford wives" and anything that goes outside
of or beyond that very limited ideal is shunned,
boycotted, canceled...

but what is never actually revealed is the why? why is
conformity so desired? why must everyone pray to the same
god, look the same, have the same ideals, love the same gender
that I do? what is the value or point of that?
that is never explained... it is, as much of the conservative
ideology, is never explained... it is just assumed...

now I will make the argument that the right never makes,
which is why is the homogenization of society/state so
desirable?

And one of the big things that conservatives go on about is
safety and security...to maintain the order.. this is why conservatives
believe themselves to be the party of "Law and order"
to maintain the law is to keep the order... but
what is not understood is that the law itself is not
about being moral or ethical... the law is about maintaining
the order... the law itself has no sense of morality or ethics...
people do, but the law does not... so, the law can
be unjust, unethical, immoral... thus slavery can be
legal, and women be the property of men and the
Holocaust can be legal as is criminalizing hiding citizen from
unethical laws.. thus the person who hid Anne Franks was in fact,
breaking the law... and the question becomes, is the hiding
of Anne Franks, a moral or immoral act? it does break the law
and the conservative holds to the law, well at least until
it is convenient to break the law... (see IQ45 and his illegal
theft of top-secret documents from the government)

if the powers of the political are used to advance the rights of people,
then it can be said that the political is being used to the greater
good of its citizens.... which application of the law is for the
greater good of its citizens? the law that turned Anne Frank into
a criminal just for being Jewish, or the nondiscriminatory laws
preventing such a thing? I would argue that the nondiscriminatory
laws are the greater good... and are the ones we should be
pursuing... that we judge people and create laws based on
ones social or political beliefs, is a judgement that ought
not to happen... to criminalize being Jewish or to
criminalize being gay or trans, is to create a greater disorder
and discord within a society/state...

for people are who they are... you can't criminalize people
for being white or being black or being a female...
as the right does...to prevent women from having
any say over their body, in regard to having an abortion
is to criminalize being a women...
to criminalize being gay or being trans is to criminalize
one for being who they are... and how is that any different
than the Nazi's criminalizing being Jewish? or the Nazi's
criminalizing being a communist? and yet, America did
criminalize people for being a communist as recently as
the 1950's.....

I for one, can't see any difference from the Nazi's criminalization
of Jews and the right-wing criminalization of gays or trans people....

In the end it comes down to what kind of society/state do
you want? What is the goal/ or point of having a society/state?
and I would argue that exclusion, such as the criminalization
of gays, jews, trans, communists, lead to a greater disorder
and chaos within a society/state...to include, to bring
more people within a society/state and that inclusion
bring about a greater order and stability than exclusion...

the fact is that the state/society by the very nature of chance
and randomness, can never be turned into a unified, whole
society/state.... just as there can never be a ''Theory of everything''
because of the randomness and chaos within the universe....
unity might be a thing to be wished for, but the reality is that
it is impossible to gain because of the random nature of
the universe... chance, randomness and chaos play too big
of a role within the universe to ever hope for some sort of
unity within the universe.....or a ''Theory of Everything"
just isn't possible....and we should accept and understand that.....

to force people into a unnatural hominization of who they
are, forces people into being who they are not....
and that leads us to exactly where people are today...
with a rising drug use, random violence, the feeling
that life is cheap because with the criminalization
of behavior as is in part, because in being gay or
being trans leads to violence and drug use and increase alcohol use...
and the notion that life is cheap..... people are not being valued
for who they are.. they are being criminalized for being who they
are, be it gay or being trans or being a woman or being Jewish...

and so we return to the original question, philosophy and politics....
what is the value of philosophy within politics? it helps us
avoid the cultural war issues that are dividing America...
by bring an understanding that if you want unity, you have
to allow diversity within America... not to criminalize
being who you are... as the right does today....

Kropotkin

let us take a look at one very troubling aspect of
our modern-day world, that of guns....

we have a daily battle over the value of guns in
modern day America....

but what is, exactly a gun? it is a tool of violence...
the argument may be, guns ''protect" but how does
a gun exactly ''protect'' one...

a gun only value is as a mean of violence...
its value is predicated on being an act of violence...
it ''protects'' by it being used as violence...
shooting someone is an act of violence...
and the gun value is a promise of violence
if attacked... that is how a gun ''protect"
by its use or threat of use...

now the right wing claim for itself, the mantel of
being "pro-life" and yet, if that were true,
then when children were being murdered,
slaughter in schools by guns, that the right wing,
would do something to ''protect" the children....
but when children are murdered by gun, the right
wing only offers up, thoughts and prayers...
no actual ''protection'' from guns... in other
words, the right wing is pro-gun, not pro-life...
for when the right to a gun is favored over
the right to life by children, then the right to
guns is higher valued then the right of children to live...
if guns are favored over children, then you no longer
have the right to call yourself "pro-life"..
for you are not pro-life, if you protect guns over
children...

one of the key sentences, if not the key sentence of
the "Declaration of Independence" is this:

"We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable;
that all men are created equal and independent, that
from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and
inalienable, among which are the preservation of
LIFE and LIBERTY and THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS"

This is from the original draft of the declaration...

that guns rights are above the "preservation of life"
is to radically misunderstand what the declaration
actually means... for the right to life is declared
sacred, by name and the right to bear arms is not....
owning guns is not listed in the declaration whereas
the right to life is.... that children's life is to be
considered to be sacred, above the right to
own a gun... that is what pro-life actually means...

but Kropotkin, one of the functions of government
is to protect property... it is fundamental in
the creation of the state and the society at large...
Locke himself said so.... but think about it...
the right to property is ''ad hoc" for the very
nature of property changes.. what is property?
something that someone owns...
something that is, by its very nature, temporary,
brief, limited, transitory... cars, houses, couches,
TV sets, are property but also, ''ad hoc" of the moment...
a gun can easily be damaged to the point of not working..
is that ''property'' have any sort of value, once damaged like
that? to be ''pro-life'' is to say, even damaged life, still
has value... to have a handicap is to still have value....
as long as one is alive, a person still has value...
whereas property, once damaged, no longer has any value....
but even property, once damaged, has no value...
think of land that has been so polluted that it
becomes unlivable.... does it still have value,
once it becomes unlivable? I would say no.....

as property is ''ad hoc" and lives are not, we can begin
to have some perspective on what is of value and
what is not of value....

or said another way... to think about lives
and property in terms of philosophy, allows us
to think about the value of these things....

what has more value.. is not an economic question nor
is it a political question, it is a philosophical question...
what is valuable and why, that is philosophy 101....
the question of values, is a Nietzsche put it,
one of the fundamental questions of philosophy....

Kropotkin

the NBA today announced the Ja Morant of the Grizzles,
has been suspended for 25 games I believe, for waving a gun around,
the question becomes, why doesn't the NRA, protest this decision?

given that the NRA has no legal standing in any case between
the NBA and Morant, but it still can weigh in on this case
and hasn't, why?

the question really is the fact that even the NRA recognizes
that there are limits to gun ownership.. and by silence with
this case, the NRA in fact, agrees with the NBA...
that they are limits to gun ownership..
the question becomes, where exactly are those limits?

and I must go to work... think about it...

Kropotkin