few if any wonder about....

[Peter Kropotkin]

there is a basic conflict in America today....

we have the anti-collective aspect of our economic policies...
that every man for himself in seeking out the basic, fundamental
trinkets of modern existence, wealth, fame, titles, material possessions
and power..... that is the bedrock of the American dream....
we seek out wealth or fame, not as a collective activity,
but as an individual one.... we do battle with each other
in the obtaining of goods and titles and wealth... and may the
best man win.... the essential aspect of the American dream lies
in the competition it creates... and competition is good, or
at least according to those who dictate the American dream...
it is one of the offshoots of Darwinism and evolution...
that animals compete for food and resources and the winners
get those resources and live, and the losers don't get those
resources and die... that in a nutshell is the American dream....
you have to defeat your fellow man to gain resources to advance
your own dream.... but the problem, one of many, with this
analysis, is that it is an all or nothing belief.... one person wins,
one person loses....and that is that with that.... there is no
middle ground in the American dream... as Smith makes clear,
this private war, as we may call it, is somehow, never exactly
explained how, but somehow these private vices of pursuing,
competing for goods and wealth, is somehow supposed to
benefit the public...that somehow seeking out our private
vices is supposed to create a public benefit..... I have never
been able to understand that alchemy.. of turning lead into gold...
or how private vices turn into a public good... and no one
has ever been able to adequately explain this....

now this individual pursuit of the trinkets of existence has a
competitor... that of the communal... of the tribe, as it were.....
are we supposed to take into account our own private
goals and agenda in place of the betterment of the community,
we live in? Which goals or actions should we engage in,
improving out public, communal selves or should we continue
to pretend that our private vices somehow benefit us collectively,
communally?

In practical terms, this is the battle between the left and the right....
the left does engage with community and doing what is best for
us collectively, whereas the right has no such interest in acting
for the benefit of the community.... all our actions must
be to our own benefits... that is conservatism in a nutshell....
if our own personal pursuit just happens to benefit the community,
well, so be it, but that is not the goal.....

as a liberal, I do support paying taxes for the benefit of the poorer
members of the society..... I am quite ok with the entitlement
programs of America because I think that they do benefit the
communal/communities of America.......I recognize that
concept that I can only do as well as the others in my community
are doing well.... my own benefit is tied up in the community
doing better, if the members of the community are doing better,
that helps me, as a member of the community..... I personally do
better if everyone in the community is doing better....

that is the liberal viewpoint......and the very idea of evolution comes
to this viewpoint... that we huma beings are social beings that must
depend on each other to meet our needs... that we must have
a community for us to meet our bodily and psychological needs...
of food, water, shelter, health care and education are all communal
activities... individually, we cannot, cannot meet our bodily needs
and we can only reach our psychological needs collectively....
we must have a community for us to meet our needs of love,
of esteem, of safety/security, of a sense of belonging....
again, individually we cannot met our psychological needs, no
matter how hard we try....

the creation of the state, of a society is meant for that meeting of
needs, both bodily and psychologically.....if the state or society didn't
met our needs, we wouldn't have them.... we would live like wolves,
apart and individually..... but the fact of the matter is, we human
beings are really pack animals.... we can only survive within a group
of other human beings.... that is not a wild guess but basic biology....

so, the conservative mantra of private vices creates a public good is a
lie.... as is the conservative idea that we human are best in competition
with others.... we are best when we cooperate with each other....
for it is in cooperation that we can best build community and within
that community, we can meet our own individual bodily and psychologically
needs....

so, what type of society, state should we be working for?
who knows because everyone is out trying to gain their own
goals without any thought to what is best for us, communally....
within a state, within a society...... the ancient Greeks had the right
idea when they thought that human beings can only be created within
the polis, that part of their word ''barbarian'' meant those who did not
live in the city.. if they live outside of the city, they were ''barbarians''....

and I suspect, but can't prove, that part of the legacy of the medieval world
has been this shift from community to individual..... the goal of the medieval
world wasn't to improve one city or polis, no, the goal of existence was
to individually, become worthy of getting to heaven....
and getting to heaven was an individual endeavor... not a collective
goal.... and thus, we can fault Catholicism and the Middle Ages,
for turning us away from the community of the Greeks and Romans,
to our individual aspirations of achieving individual goals, not
community or collective goals....

so, what comes first, the individual or the community and why
that choice? What arguments can we make for our continuation
of the Middle Ages values of individual before community and what
arguments can we make for the community before the individual?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so, let us continue to flesh this out....

the modern acts of abortion and those who claim to be ''pro-life''...
as this issue rages across America, let us take this test of
the individual rights vs community rights......

as with any issues, this does not operate in a vacuum,
we must think about abortions in terms of the
overall social and political principles we have....

the political system we live in, well at least theoretically,
is a democracy.... that of choice.... we can individually
choose our own collective course of actions...

the idea is that we send people to our state and national
legislatures and they, in our name, make the choices
that we want them to make.... to act in our stead,
because we can't individually make it to Washington,
we send people to act for us.... that is the essential nature
of democracy.... the technical name for our democracy,
is ''Representative democracy'' in which someone represents our
interests in D.C. or in our statehouses.....

One of the problems with this issue of abortions, is that it is
being driven by a minority of people.... and that in every single
election for or against abortions, the people of that state has
voted to keep abortions.....and I would suggest that in a national election,
that people would vote to keep abortions legal...

so, how does a system of majority rights, have their rights subverted
by a minority? that is one of the questions involving abortions....

so, the question, one of them anyway, is this question of choice...
do we prevent women from making their own choices about their bodies?
that is one of the fundamental rights that the anti-abortion crowd seems to
ignore.... in a democracy, we are supposed to have the right to make
our own choices about our own bodies..... and here we find ourselves
at the crux of the debate... choices.......

the very same crowd that says women have no voice in their own bodies
also claim that the state cannot mandate masks for people......
as wearing a mask is an individual choice..... but that choice apparently
doesn't extend to women....

so, we reach the individual choice vs the community rights....

do we push the idea of individual rights over the community rights,
or do we accept the argument that the individual rights can only
be given communally? who decides and why that decision?

who should decide the individual right of a women to have an abortion
against the community needs? but I would suggest that this argument
has another layer to it.....

if we prevent abortions because ''life is sacred'' then we must be
consistent and ban the death penalty... but I just read the other
day that a state, I think Nebraska, wants to give the death penalty
to women who have abortions.... now I think that they are very
confused on the whole sanctity of life thing if they are advocating
the death penalty for abortions.... but once again, let us
think about this issue in terms of the individual vs the community
rights......does the death penalty for abortions really serve the
either the community or the individual? I can't see how....

if we advocate for the individual, then we advocate for the rights
and choices of the individual over the community needs and rights,
if we advocate for the community, then we advocate for the
community rights over the individual rights.... with the
community being able to dictate what rights and obligations
an individual has.... we are less free in a community based rights
system, but we have far less anarchy and chaos in a community
based right system..... so, do we choose the individual over
the community or do we choose the community over the
individual?

that is the question.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

we must think of ourselves and others, in terms
of both a macro and micro level....

and most people fail to do that because they are so engaged in
the micro level of life.... what is best for me personally?
instead of ''what is best for us collectively?
well, that depends on how important one thinks the community
is in terms of the relationship between the individual and
the community.... as I see human beings being social creatures
that can only reach their individual goals within a community,
I see the community as being more important than the individual
needs and rights.... but as always, there is a limit to the community
vs individual rights...not to go to extremes, but to find the limits
within moderation....to engage for the majority, but to
also be mindful of the rights of the individual......
it is a tough balancing act..... between the rights of
the one vs the rights of the many or the community......

but we have to begin to think in these terms....
of finding the balance between the individual and
the community.....

and to do this, we have to think in a much larger picture then
we are normally thinking about..... we have to think in
terms of both the micro, ourselves, and the macro, of the community...

and do we work out set principles to achieve this balance or do we,
as human beings often do, set out ''ad hoc'' rules to achieve
this balance?

more questions, and few if any answers....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

so is the action of abortions an individual act or
does it have a communal aspect to it?
if the community can dictate what a person, like
in the case of abortions, dictate what a women can or cannot do,
then the right admits that state can, can dictate all aspects
of human activity.... thus, accepting that communism is
a legitimate form of government....because the individual
is accountable and responsible to the community for their rights
and obligations... if abortions are a legitimate place for
governments, then the government can and will dictate
all aspects of the individual rights.. where exactly does one
draw the line then, if abortions are under the direct control
of the government? what else is under the direct control of
the government? How we pray, how we buy things, how we
travel about, all aspects of modern life is now controlled
by the government if, if we accept that abortions is
controllable by the government.....

Is that the bridge that conservatives want us to cross?

but the bigger issue is not abortions, here it is just an example....
of the question that is the point, do we human beings have choice
or don't we? and who decides.... the individual or the state/society?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

many of our beliefs and values have a
communal basis.... is man/human beings, good or bad?
depends on is he acts within a communal fashion.....
bad being he is acting against the community in some fashion....
morals and ethics are community based.... is it good or bad
for the community? murder is considered wrong because
it upsets the community and makes it harder to exists
within the community if murders are freely allowed.....
that would create a uneasy community... one where we
cannot depend on our own safety..... murder is wrong because
it violates community values, not individual values...

all actions that we take is done in terms of the community,
not individiually..... we are judge good or evil, based on community
values, on the community needs and wants, not on individual values
or needs......

think of our institutions, they are community based.... from education
to social security, to the court system to the fire department....
not one of the these is individual based, based on individual needs
or values, but on community values and needs...

the modern world is based on communal needs, not individual needs....
the modern world is based on the many, not on the few or the one......
so, why does the modern conservative reject the communal aspect
of our society, state, and yet carves out exceptions like abortions
versus such things as masks?

why are abortions a community thing and mask and guns are not?
once again, this is not about abortions but about the values
that are practice individually and values practice collectively...
who decides and why? are there principles involved or is it
''ad hoc'' as usual? of the moment?

one has to wonder....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and so we expand our thinking about the individual
and community to such concepts as war and economics
and history and capital punishment.....

the argument for war and capital punishment is that society,
the state needs to protect itself.... not the individual, but
the state/society..... and war is violence against another state,
which is just other individuals...... and as individuals, we
have virtually no choice in the wars we fight and have fought......

by and large, most wars Americans have had, had support
within that society... and yet, the Vietnam war was very unpopular...
and it didn't stop that war from dragging on for years...

if wars are fought in our name, shouldn't we have some say in their
usage.... and most wars fought in the last 70 years including the
Korean war didn't have any sort of formal declaration....it was
called a ''police action'' and where is my voice in that ''police action?"

and the idea of capital punishment, is done in the name of protecting
the state, not necessarily the individual......and our economics,
calls to end capitalism is rejected in the name of the society,
not by the needs and wants of the individual....

and within history..... does history focuses on the one, the individual
or does it focus on the many? that answer is easy enough to state.....

so, the larger questions of existence of economics, of history, of
capital punishment and war, have both an individual and a collective/
community aspect to them.....and our wondering is about what
should we do in terms of both the individual and the collective
aspect of war, of economics, of history, of such individual ideas
as capital punishment.....

how does the concept of war being impacted by us, individually
and us collectively, work out?

there is a macro and a micro aspect of every single question
that we face as human beings.....how does it impact us on
the large scale and how does it impact us on the small,
individual scale? History for example is a macro study
and yet, how does history impact us individually?
that has yet to be determined.....
and perhaps we should engage in that question, both
individually and collectively? what is the impact of history
on our lives, individually and collectively?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

let us take another point in this question
of the individual vs the community.....

that of salvation...... to be saved... is this an individual
question or is it a community question? Part of the
''modern'' answer lies in the right wing attacks on
trans and gay people..... that salvation has a communal
aspect is a given in laws preventing drag shows and
gay marriage and gender roles..... if the point of salvation
is found individually, then there is no need for laws
against ''sins" such as drag shows and gender roles....
those laws only exists if, if we accept the idea that
salvation is communally found.... the idea that to
keep people ''pure'' and ''sinless'' requires laws
passed to prevent gender roles or passed to prevent
drag shows or even old school, to ban plays and dice
and other ''immoral'' acts..... to preserve the
sanctity of the city/state..... sin is thought of in terms of
the macro, the large... cities and the state.....
and yet, does the state have a right to intervene in
questions such as gender roles and drag shows?
as usual, the right screams in drag shows, especially,
but what about the children? Which suggests that
banning drag shows is about the community, not
individually..... but where is the line being drawn?
gay marriage and gender roles yes, ban them
but not ban those who have been convicted of a felony
from running for president? why those lines and not
another line? what I am calling into question is this
question of private acts turning into public acts
that demand some sort of punishment..... Why does
a man dressing like a women require a public response?
I see that as being a private matter... but the right wing
in their vision of sin being public and a matter of
being judge, legally and otherwise..... that laws are
based on a religious foundation is the GOP/MAGA
idea of the law...... and the GOP/MAGA inability
to distinguish between private matters, men dressing as women
and public matter, a convicted felon running for president?

the entire point of the judicial system is that crimes, have
a public nature, a need to address publicly, and micro
acts such as dressing as a woman...... why is murder, public
and cross dressing, private treated the same?

this thought addresses the very point or need of public
punishment..... why this act and not that act?
and we can see, in the entire weed transitions of
the last 20 years of weed being a crime and now,
nationally pretty much legal...... how does one go from
an act being illegal like weed and an act going to be
legal, like weed today?

What has been illegal is now legal and I suspect that such illegal
acts like cross dressing and drag shows will become legal
across the nation..... with the same reasoning...... that
turned weed from being illegal to being legal....
where is the public harm? not all private acts have a
public harm....so, is abortion a public act, a public harm
or is it a private act that has no public harm?

is capital punishment, is that a private act? clearly not,
and yet, I believe that capital punishment creates a public
harm..... that capital punishment fails to solve the reason it
exists, that it is some kind of deterrent.... that clearly is not
true.....for people still murder other people even though it is
against the law and subject to capital punishment......
to truly understand capital punishment is to know
that it is about punishment, not about deterrentence.....
and on that basis, we allow capital punishment....

but does that mean that capital punishment is a private matter
or a public matter?

one has to wonder.....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

to follow up this thought, that a state, Louisiana, is trying to
put the ten commandments into every public classroom in school there...
which leads to the question, is religion a private matter or a
public matter? I hold that religion is a private matter and not
a public matter and yet, the state of Louisiana, believe that
religion is a public matter... Worthy of being put into every school
room in the state.... private acts/thoughts vs public acts and thoughts......

the community vs the individual.......and why should we pick
public sins vs private sins?
to put the ten commandments into schools is to publicly
choose that religion as a public religion....the state religion
which is in clear violation of the constitution..... the law of the land.....

once again, we have public vs private being contested in a very public
way...... if religion is a public matter, then we are going to take matters
of faith, private matters into the public areana..... is that really
what we want to do? so making private choices, into public reality?

to allow private choices as public matters is to invite the disastrous
religious wars of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries.... is any religion
worth that sort of devastating actions? where it took Germany centuries
to recover from the various wars......is private belief worth that sort
of public violence? History has already shown us what will happen
if we turn private beliefs and values into public policies.....
is that what you really want in turning private values and beliefs
into public policies?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

given the right wing attempt to put the ten commandments into
schools, as they have tried to do so for years....
suggests that a spiritual crisis has become a public matter...
that spiritual matters are a public matter.... a dubious concept
to say the least.....and how does your spiritual crisis become
my spiritual crisis? by putting the ten commandments into
schools it suggests that spiritual matters are a public concern......
a belief that I vehemently deny.... my being an atheist is a private
matter... not a public one and yet, the right wing suggests that
my own personal choice is a public matter.... by bringing the
ten commandments into schools, it tells us that private belief
is now a public matter..... my own private beliefs AND your
beliefs also become a public matter if, if they can bring
the ten commandments into public schools.....

how do you feel about them apples?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

is sin, which is another word for error, a public matter
or a private matter?

as the usual matter before the revolutions of modern times,
was that sin, error, was legislated by the society, state....
at one point in time in America, it was the law that
one had to go to church....and that sins like gambling
and drinking were against the law....so, sin was
legislated and forbidden.... but should ''sin'' be a private
matter or should it be, as it once was, a public matter?

if it is public, that is to suggests that sin, a private act,
has the ability to corrupt others..... but if we hold to our values,
then it shouldn't matter if we see ''sin''... we still have our values,
beliefs to guide us..... so, in this act of corruption suggests
that people lack values and beliefs to guide their lives....
and if that is true, where does that blame fall on?
the state/society or the individual?

is sin, private or public?
that is one of the questions we must answer in order to
find the ''correct path''

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

if one says, sin within the details, that sin is ''ad hoc''
of the moment, then sin is, situationally ethics...
which is to say, the situation dictates the ethics,
that the situation dictates if an act is sinful or not...
that suggests that sin is not a universal law
or universal in any manner....

that sin, error, is just a matter of the situation, pretty much
removes the bible from any kind of consideration for laws
or rules....as the bible pretends to be universal, or applicable
to everyone... if however, sin is situational, it is not universal....

and we cannot forbid actions or sins from a biblical standpoint...
thus, we can now allow abortions as that comes from a religious
standpoint, that ''life is sacred'' with sacred being a religious word....

and the laws themselves become situational... of the moment....
and we admit there is no such thing as a universal law or
belief..... and much of the arguments that the right presents,
goes away....

Kropotkin