Philosophy Now Forum

we have two modes of existence....

being and non-being...clearly the harder to understand is the non-being...
so most people, hang with being.. and ignore non-being...
and frankly, I don't blame them... for I too, ignore non-being...
and this question of non-being has only become a question,
in western philosophy anyway, in the last 140 years..
(eastern philosophy like Indian philosophy, has engaged with
non-being for thousands of years)

but as we know/suspect, that life and philosophy, is actually
an equation.. the two sides of any equation must match, be equal,
or the equation fails... for example, peace and violence..
they are an equation and if one side become dominant over
the other side, then the equation/life is in trouble...

and so, in this equation of being, we must have the other side of
the equation be non-being...

being = non-being...

and for human beings, this non-being is death... and we escape
all talk of death in America... what is death and what does it mean to us?
who in America talks about non-being or death? no one....

like science and its understanding of black holes, we can't get into
a black hole to properly understand it, we also can't get into death
to properly understand it....

''the undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns''

what is death? the return to non-being that many claim that is
existence... that non-existence is a more primary state then
existence.. we return to non-existence because it is where we
are originally from... and life/existence is the temporary state,
and non-being is the primary state of the universe...
and most of eastern philosophies hold to this.. that we
come from and belong to, non-being.. and what does this thought
mean to us? that we really belong to non-being, non-existence,
and existence is really just a temporary state?

it should make life/existence a much more serious thing....
that existence/life is a rarer thing than non-existence/life, should
give us some pause as to what it means to be human...
as it is a rare thing to exist, much more than non-existence,
we should review what it means to be human....

Kropotkin

and we return to existentialism...
which is what?

a new way of thinking that returns to a seriousness to life
that had been lost... as we human beings lost our belief in
religions and god, we also lost touch with that which give
value to human beings... thus we can connect the loss
of religions and god, to the ''evils'' of the 20th century...
we can place the massive dehumanization of human beings to
the rise of new isms and ideologies that denied the
value and worth of human beings...this nihilism was
quite dominant in the 20th century.... the rise of capitalism
and communism is the rise of nihilism.. the negation of
human beings and their values...

for every day that capitalism exists, we hold to nihilism,
the negation of human beings... and this negation/nihilism
is the denial that human beings have any value to them...
it is the acceptance of non-being as a permanent condition...
instead of the acceptance of life/being as the much more
valuable thing because it is the rarer thing....
and if there is anything capitalism has taught us, is that
the rarer a thing, the more valuable the thing is....
and as existence is rarer than non-existence, then it becomes
more valuable.. thus it become a more important thing
to work for, to achieve...if life is more important
than non-being, than it has more value...which then
denies the entire 20th century nihilism...

instead of god, we hold to being as the most valuable part of existence...
not god, not heaven, not money or material possessions, or fame/power,
but existence itself is what is the most valuable thing we have...
and the thing we should be fighting for... as it is the rarest thing, we
have...

Kropotkin

if we accept the premise that being is rarer than non-being,
that we come from nothing, and we will return to nothing,
our natural state, then we must grant the idea that existence
has more value than non-being, non-existence....

if that is accepted, then human beings, ALL human beings, have greater
value than the trinkets of existence....one person, has greater
value than all the trinkets of existence... money, fame, power,
material possessions and titles....and on that basis, we reject
the nihilism of the last 200 years... that nihilism of nationalism
and of capitalism and communism and all religions, which put things,
god or death or money, before human beings.... any ism that negates
human beings and their values is rejected...

what does this mean?

that human beings, one individual has greater value than all the
money or gods or heaven or titles in the world...
thus we must undertake the overcoming of human beings as
things or a commodity, that is the heart of capitalism and
communism or religions like Catholicism...

and here comes the hypocrisy of the right.. they will
happily end all abortions as the sanctity of life,
and yet support isms that denies the sanctity of life,
and in fact, make human beings irrelevant or unimportant...
or just as bad, a commodity... something to make money,
as is the basic point of capitalism, that denies the value
of human beings, by turning them into commodities their
only value is to produce things, to make money....
what a devaluation of life that is....
or of communism, where human beings only goal is
to create the worker state.. humans have no other function
than to be the creators of the worker state.... besides being
nihilism, that rejects human beings as human beings...
with no value or worth, outside of what they produce to make money...
yah, that hypocrisy...

Kropotkin