Applied Objectivism, An Introductory Essay Byron Beckham Feb 2020
This is an appeal and a challenge to all persons, and especially academics and influencers. That you may generously consider this concept, and attempt to refute and deny the insights therein. That’s in the hope that if you’re unable to objectively refute the insights, that you find that meaningful. Beyond that hope, that you find it gnaws at you like some intellectual elephant in the upstairs bath of your brain. An elephant that you somehow can’t quite figure out how it doesn’t make sense. That somehow it seems too obvious and impossible at the same time, and somehow you can’t resolve that. In grandest hope, that you may eventually be moved to reprioritize your devotion to the subject, to its development and popularity.
Because all of us are indeed our only hope.
If the promotion of reason and Applied Objectivism were to spread so that it became a sustained permanent movement, my life's mission would be successful...
Objectivism is not a proprietary word or concept. It's a consistent and complex process. It's much older than the mostly failed movement of that name. It's tragically ironic that Ayn Rand and her associates seem to have been poor at performing objectivism, as this may have been terribly counterproductive to humanity by confounding a vital truth. We must not judge objectivism, or any concept, based on a flawed expression of it.
The single most important thing to understand about objectivism is that it's the single most important thing to us. It is our only guide. This is a timeless truth. Objectivism is synonymous with 'being according to reason'. Reason is perhaps the only thing found in philosophy that has great value. I digress, this foreshadows a criticism of philosophy.
1. Objectivism IS civilization done best. There is no daylight between them. Reason is our only guide as persons and societies. It may seem there are other guides but they fail unless they themselves are tempered by objectivism, as is currently and repeatedly dramatically demonstrated. Objectivism has not been the central focus of civilization that it must be. So then, neither has civilization progressed consistently.
You may ask if reason is civilization, then aren't we already using it? Well, objectively good results can occur unintentionally, or with partial awareness of it and without overt attempts to be objective. It can occur randomly in the form of social norms. It can occur in an ad-hoc way, or in a trial-and-error way, instead of in an aware and intentional way. Be alarmed, be clear, this is not sufficient! Norms can also just as easily be irrational and unhealthy. Without a functional guiding principle, progress can be illusory and halted or going backward. We must stop viewing civilization as something that 'just happens' or is taken care of by 'other people'. We must all take an active and conscious role in progress. Everything that civilization gets right is consistent with objectivism and every time it fails it's because it fails to be objective. Our track record is so poor and inconsistent because we don't overtly base our efforts on that fact. We can’t instantly reform ourselves, we must first establish a cultural basis for that.
Expecting to have a healthy, fully functional society that isn't centrally and holistically oriented around objectivism is like expecting to be able to run a bank without math.
Which is to say we must eventually regard and include reason as the '4th R', alongside math, reading and writing. But that can't be done without sufficient demand for that, and greater fluency in reason. This may seem strange, but consider even the best of our societies are far from what may be required to be resistant to the ever-present threats of subjectivism and authoritarianism. The tools and methods to corruptly, ruinously dominate societies are readily available, and since societies are not based in reason they have a weak immune system against those methods. The more technology and growth we have the greater threat we pose to ourselves and other life. Civic progress lags so much behind technological progress (or is not even happening) that the threat keeps growing more dangerous. Civic progress is not even consistently forward or predictable the way technological progress is. There are many other vitally important things people do, but only doing those is like the necessary treatment of symptoms without also working on curing the disease. Finding a cure has the same goal as treating the symptoms, even better, but of course it can be much more difficult and take an indefinite amount of time.
Remember that progress often means things that have never been done. And remember that in the face of our increasing threat to ourselves, in the face of our ongoing damage to ourselves, further progress is required, not optional. We are not in as urgent need of more technology as much as we are in need of a global age of reason. The way we order and govern ourselves around irrational social hierarchies and place authority in humans instead of in reason, are central things yet to be civilized. We must foremost place authority in objective methods, not foremost in people. This is how science operates! But science is narrowly applied to science, not to guiding us! Even scientists such as anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and neurologists seldom apply responsible holistic reasoning towards civic progress. They often undermine it, with narrow-context objectivity that directly opposes holistic reason, through careless misleading conclusions that seem to at least implicitly pronounce that we're hopelessly, naturally dysfunctional animals, while failing to bear in mind and explain it has always been and will always be the purpose of civilization to culturally and structurally address and transcend the unhealthy ways we are. We need our scientists influenced by a field of holistic reasoning about civics, so they can include their observations into the context of our progress.
We must hold dear the truth that overtly forwarding civilization itself is our individual responsibility, because the results we have flow from the collective influence of everyone. This hints at a concept for later discussion, direct democracy.
Conceptually objectivism is and must be the science of governing all our affairs. Our individual lives also. Objectivism should be regarded an entire field of study itself, since it's implications are so vital and profound. This may sound odd since we take reason for granted. But that's exactly the point. Don't many of us have a similar view? We must stop in our tracks and remember that we don't take it for granted because we are so fluent in it! It's not that kind of taking for granted, is it? Since our civilization is what defines us and determines our quality of life and future, must it not be the most important subject to us? Must we not treat it rigorously and with innovation? Civics must be forwarded objectively, not just historically recorded objectively. It must be considered a vital science. Applied Objectivism has rules we can further discover and practice. We don't have to be experts to have immediate benefit from culturally revering and sharing reason. I keep saying "promotion" and "reverence" and "prioritizing" because doing that leads to devoting resources to it, to getting better at it and using it more ! That's the starting point. It won't happen the other way around !
We must evaluate the idea that without being based in reason, civilization may have already reached it's limits in nations. In other words, things may get no better at all unless there is a revolution in the authority of reason.
2. All of our failures to civilize, such as civil rights abuses for example, are ultimately a result of not being guided by objectivism. All activists must also be activists for objectivism, for it addresses all problems at once indirectly, more slowly, and more broadly. Single issue activism, like the Climate Crisis for example, is vital, but that doesn't change the fact that lack of objectivism culturally and structurally is the source of all issues. Accountability to reason could be codified if we appropriately devoted ourselves to higher competence in it. It could eventually find its way into overt and articulate expression in laws and constitutions.
The Constitution Of The United States Of America, for example, was written with concern for monarchies and imbalances of power. It does not remotely address the ultimate problem of lack of accountability to reason.
We must design codes to render subjectivism permanently legally powerless, and politically powerless. That may sound far-fetched, but there are methods and the study of reason can be self-instructive. The general idea is not that we necessarily directly and immediately attempt such things, but that we recognize the absolute necessity of immediately actively beginning to nurture and influence our culture towards eventually being supportive and capable of doing that.
3. The notions that our neglect of objectivism is because it's not real but abstract, or too hard, are false. The thing preventing us from putting it to greater use, with more ease, is that we don't place it of central importance in our cultures, institutions, and schools.
We don't pay enough attention to reason to know how essential it is to our wellness, and we don't pay enough attention to reason because we don't know how essential it is !
This isn't just the study of the mechanics of reason, but the study of the full consequenses of our misuse of it! Those are probably even more than you think !
We can liken apathy or doubt about the feasibility of its wider adoption to having those reactions about the development and employment of laws and governance. Those are complex and difficult too, but despite that, we've employed them, as well as we have. What's missing is an overt sustained widespread attempt to base society in articulated reason. That's not a short term goal, and probably not a single generation goal. Reason can inform and shift priorities, such that we start to see we can't tolerate things we thought we could. Reason can reveal insidious dangerous structural flaws and vulnerabilities, and ways to address those. Reason can replace less sustainable motivating factors, like our passions and fears, so that we are more consistently contributing to progress. Reason doesn't wait until it's too late.
4. This may be surprising, but it's an essential tenet: Objectivism can't be conducted without criticism. We must flip our cultural practices about criticism. We must celebrate it! We must gleefully practice it! We must celebrate making and finding mistakes!
This means: 1. Offering and accepting criticism between people, and 2. Being continuously self-critical and self-checking.
But that can't happen unless we invalidate social and emotional fears and discomfort about criticism.
Criticism doesn't mean being 'negative'. However, we mustn't demand that criticism seem "friendly". We must only ask that its intentions be constructive. Certain kinds of egoism, insecurities, and social pressures and motivations thwart valid and constructive criticism. We also resist and reject criticism due to processes including 'investment bias'. Social investment, emotional investment, and prior intellectual investment bias will leave us less able to receive the insights of criticisms, unwilling to be less subjective and more objective. Finding out what you're missing or doing wrong is one of the best paths to learning. Well-intended criticisms are not always objective themselves, they must be held accountable as well.
5. Objectivism seems to be as well described by learning how to notice what is being done wrong, as by trying to describe instructions on how to do it. Always trying to find fault and mistakes in thinking, if done correctly and exhaustively, can leave remaining something sound. Studying, and even naming, fallacies and biases yourself is a big part of that. This process can be a compass that may not point directly at where you need to end up, but away from directions that are not objective. That can still be a working compass.
6. Basic instruction on how to conduct objectivism already exists in concepts such as epistemology and skepticism. Epistemology is unique and indispensable. It establishes how solipsism is insanity and how we can most reliably form knowledge.
Objectivism is not mysterious, only neglected, and challenging. More attention to it could provide advanced and new insights.
7. Objectivism MUST be holistic or it's not really objectivism. It must consider any broad implications of the narrowest focuses. It must be our entire being and existence, all concerns and the broadest context. It must not be an objective tool used to subjective ends, the way science often is, for example. It must always hold itself accountable not just to reason but to holistic reason.
Objectivism ideally is expressed with complete devotion to it, and personal promotion of it, but it’s only about being objective. It is inherently anti-dogmatic. It will necessarily conflict with irrational social ideas that we have to speak against. It’s about replacing them with rational social ideas. In preview of a more complete definition, “rational” is the quality of a process that most reliably results in the most desirable outcome. It’s sometimes a more quantitative state of occuring than the binary expression of rational vs irrational.
8. Objectivism here emphasizes contextually 'Applied Objectivism', not 'observational objectivism'. Applied means it produces guidance and insights beyond observational objectivism and doesn't just report on the landscape. The applied kind is more often neglected, misunderstood, and misused, to our great harm. Applied Objectivism must broadly refer to the context of "what is most healthy for intelligent life and the best stewardship of other life". Objectivism is not nihilistic or 'impartial'. It is partial to what is best for life. That is not subjective ! Also, it includes countless subcontexts with narrower or more pedestrian goals. Defining what is best or most healthy must be done objectively as well to provide the goal onto which objectivism is applied.
‘Observational objective’ refers to objective interpretation of observations of physical reality, and of intangible realities such as behaviors. It's fallacious to think objectivism is invalid when it's about intangibles, or when it's the Applied type. Objectivism can be conducted falsely, but it is always uniquely valid conceptually, or when conducted flawlessly.
It's important to objectively conclude, once and forever, that concepts such as nihilism (and solipsism) are insane and destructively antithetical to civilization. They must not just be talking points. They must be known to be invalid. They are ongoingly, repeatedly referenced by everyday people as arguments against civilization ! This is just one example of an educational failure that results from our underutilization of objectivism.
Reason tells us that our individual lives are very important. But reason also dictates a hierarchy. As important as our lives are, the life and future of our entire race is more important still. This is of vital relevance to our concept of civilization.
Individual lives are inseparable from the context of the entire race. The race itself has an ultimate responsibility to itself and all life on Earth. The race has the collective potential of near immortality, which comes with a matching magnitude of responsibility and potential of stewardship and expansion of life in our stellar neighborhood. But if we survive that long, and if that happens, it will only be if we change the course we are on. Our only compass is reason.
We must stop denying or ignoring that hierarchy. Placing utmost importance on the immediate and distant future of our race is not a detractor from our individual interests. If the needs of all of us and future generations seems to be in conflict with our personal interests, that is a clear sign that objectivism is not present. This is in no way an argument against individual rights.
9. It's fallacious to demand that Applied Objectivism must provide answers to dilemmas in order to be objective and legitimate. Actual dilemmas exist and can be imagined, and by definition can't be solved.
10. It's fallacious to demand that Applied Objectivism provide answers to all questions relevant to an issue to be objective. It need only provide an objective step to be objective. Morality, socio-economics, etc must be objectivized, but that can't be done all at once. General progress is partial, but even symbolically placing reason foremost represents a giant leap in progress.
11. Conscious attempts at objectiveness often fail for a variety of reasons, but it's fallacious to think that means it's less profoundly important for us to try, and to not be wholly interested in and wholly committed to it.
12. We may fail to place accountability to reason first because our immediate survival as a race may not depend on it, even though our eventual survival does. Our failure to devote our culture to reason is our root failure, and insidious in this way. It ongoingly reduces our welfare. Technology depends on rational (objective) structure to operate. But people can operate in very unhealthy and ultimately self-destructive ways for extended, but not indefinite, periods. That leads to the end of civilizations, and the journey is miserable. Nihilism insanely argues that “nothing matters” because we all die, and our race will eventually die. But that’s a fatal, self-fulfilling argument, an intellectual pathology. Maybe there aren't too many raging nihilists among us, I don’t know. But maybe just a little nihilism infects our subconscious, like a whispering bias. Opposing it, and subjectivism, with every fiber of our being, is the only chance we have of surviving as long and healthy as possible, and reaching as close to our potential as possible. Essential to that effort is a transformation of the emphasis we place on reason and Applied Objectivism. Today is a good day to start transforming ourselves beyond this age.
Do you think that the goal of reason-based society sounds ideal, but also impossible? There’s a lot more to discuss...
This is an appeal and a challenge to all persons, and especially academics and influencers. That you may generously consider this concept, and attempt to refute and deny the insights therein. That’s in the hope that if you’re unable to objectively refute the insights, that you find that meaningful. Beyond that hope, that you find it gnaws at you like some intellectual elephant in the upstairs bath of your brain. An elephant that you somehow can’t quite figure out how it doesn’t make sense. That somehow it seems too obvious and impossible at the same time, and somehow you can’t resolve that. In grandest hope, that you may eventually be moved to reprioritize your devotion to the subject, to its development and popularity.
Because all of us are indeed our only hope.
If the promotion of reason and Applied Objectivism were to spread so that it became a sustained permanent movement, my life's mission would be successful...
Objectivism is not a proprietary word or concept. It's a consistent and complex process. It's much older than the mostly failed movement of that name. It's tragically ironic that Ayn Rand and her associates seem to have been poor at performing objectivism, as this may have been terribly counterproductive to humanity by confounding a vital truth. We must not judge objectivism, or any concept, based on a flawed expression of it.
The single most important thing to understand about objectivism is that it's the single most important thing to us. It is our only guide. This is a timeless truth. Objectivism is synonymous with 'being according to reason'. Reason is perhaps the only thing found in philosophy that has great value. I digress, this foreshadows a criticism of philosophy.
1. Objectivism IS civilization done best. There is no daylight between them. Reason is our only guide as persons and societies. It may seem there are other guides but they fail unless they themselves are tempered by objectivism, as is currently and repeatedly dramatically demonstrated. Objectivism has not been the central focus of civilization that it must be. So then, neither has civilization progressed consistently.
You may ask if reason is civilization, then aren't we already using it? Well, objectively good results can occur unintentionally, or with partial awareness of it and without overt attempts to be objective. It can occur randomly in the form of social norms. It can occur in an ad-hoc way, or in a trial-and-error way, instead of in an aware and intentional way. Be alarmed, be clear, this is not sufficient! Norms can also just as easily be irrational and unhealthy. Without a functional guiding principle, progress can be illusory and halted or going backward. We must stop viewing civilization as something that 'just happens' or is taken care of by 'other people'. We must all take an active and conscious role in progress. Everything that civilization gets right is consistent with objectivism and every time it fails it's because it fails to be objective. Our track record is so poor and inconsistent because we don't overtly base our efforts on that fact. We can’t instantly reform ourselves, we must first establish a cultural basis for that.
Expecting to have a healthy, fully functional society that isn't centrally and holistically oriented around objectivism is like expecting to be able to run a bank without math.
Which is to say we must eventually regard and include reason as the '4th R', alongside math, reading and writing. But that can't be done without sufficient demand for that, and greater fluency in reason. This may seem strange, but consider even the best of our societies are far from what may be required to be resistant to the ever-present threats of subjectivism and authoritarianism. The tools and methods to corruptly, ruinously dominate societies are readily available, and since societies are not based in reason they have a weak immune system against those methods. The more technology and growth we have the greater threat we pose to ourselves and other life. Civic progress lags so much behind technological progress (or is not even happening) that the threat keeps growing more dangerous. Civic progress is not even consistently forward or predictable the way technological progress is. There are many other vitally important things people do, but only doing those is like the necessary treatment of symptoms without also working on curing the disease. Finding a cure has the same goal as treating the symptoms, even better, but of course it can be much more difficult and take an indefinite amount of time.
Remember that progress often means things that have never been done. And remember that in the face of our increasing threat to ourselves, in the face of our ongoing damage to ourselves, further progress is required, not optional. We are not in as urgent need of more technology as much as we are in need of a global age of reason. The way we order and govern ourselves around irrational social hierarchies and place authority in humans instead of in reason, are central things yet to be civilized. We must foremost place authority in objective methods, not foremost in people. This is how science operates! But science is narrowly applied to science, not to guiding us! Even scientists such as anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and neurologists seldom apply responsible holistic reasoning towards civic progress. They often undermine it, with narrow-context objectivity that directly opposes holistic reason, through careless misleading conclusions that seem to at least implicitly pronounce that we're hopelessly, naturally dysfunctional animals, while failing to bear in mind and explain it has always been and will always be the purpose of civilization to culturally and structurally address and transcend the unhealthy ways we are. We need our scientists influenced by a field of holistic reasoning about civics, so they can include their observations into the context of our progress.
We must hold dear the truth that overtly forwarding civilization itself is our individual responsibility, because the results we have flow from the collective influence of everyone. This hints at a concept for later discussion, direct democracy.
Conceptually objectivism is and must be the science of governing all our affairs. Our individual lives also. Objectivism should be regarded an entire field of study itself, since it's implications are so vital and profound. This may sound odd since we take reason for granted. But that's exactly the point. Don't many of us have a similar view? We must stop in our tracks and remember that we don't take it for granted because we are so fluent in it! It's not that kind of taking for granted, is it? Since our civilization is what defines us and determines our quality of life and future, must it not be the most important subject to us? Must we not treat it rigorously and with innovation? Civics must be forwarded objectively, not just historically recorded objectively. It must be considered a vital science. Applied Objectivism has rules we can further discover and practice. We don't have to be experts to have immediate benefit from culturally revering and sharing reason. I keep saying "promotion" and "reverence" and "prioritizing" because doing that leads to devoting resources to it, to getting better at it and using it more ! That's the starting point. It won't happen the other way around !
We must evaluate the idea that without being based in reason, civilization may have already reached it's limits in nations. In other words, things may get no better at all unless there is a revolution in the authority of reason.
2. All of our failures to civilize, such as civil rights abuses for example, are ultimately a result of not being guided by objectivism. All activists must also be activists for objectivism, for it addresses all problems at once indirectly, more slowly, and more broadly. Single issue activism, like the Climate Crisis for example, is vital, but that doesn't change the fact that lack of objectivism culturally and structurally is the source of all issues. Accountability to reason could be codified if we appropriately devoted ourselves to higher competence in it. It could eventually find its way into overt and articulate expression in laws and constitutions.
The Constitution Of The United States Of America, for example, was written with concern for monarchies and imbalances of power. It does not remotely address the ultimate problem of lack of accountability to reason.
We must design codes to render subjectivism permanently legally powerless, and politically powerless. That may sound far-fetched, but there are methods and the study of reason can be self-instructive. The general idea is not that we necessarily directly and immediately attempt such things, but that we recognize the absolute necessity of immediately actively beginning to nurture and influence our culture towards eventually being supportive and capable of doing that.
3. The notions that our neglect of objectivism is because it's not real but abstract, or too hard, are false. The thing preventing us from putting it to greater use, with more ease, is that we don't place it of central importance in our cultures, institutions, and schools.
We don't pay enough attention to reason to know how essential it is to our wellness, and we don't pay enough attention to reason because we don't know how essential it is !
This isn't just the study of the mechanics of reason, but the study of the full consequenses of our misuse of it! Those are probably even more than you think !
We can liken apathy or doubt about the feasibility of its wider adoption to having those reactions about the development and employment of laws and governance. Those are complex and difficult too, but despite that, we've employed them, as well as we have. What's missing is an overt sustained widespread attempt to base society in articulated reason. That's not a short term goal, and probably not a single generation goal. Reason can inform and shift priorities, such that we start to see we can't tolerate things we thought we could. Reason can reveal insidious dangerous structural flaws and vulnerabilities, and ways to address those. Reason can replace less sustainable motivating factors, like our passions and fears, so that we are more consistently contributing to progress. Reason doesn't wait until it's too late.
4. This may be surprising, but it's an essential tenet: Objectivism can't be conducted without criticism. We must flip our cultural practices about criticism. We must celebrate it! We must gleefully practice it! We must celebrate making and finding mistakes!
This means: 1. Offering and accepting criticism between people, and 2. Being continuously self-critical and self-checking.
But that can't happen unless we invalidate social and emotional fears and discomfort about criticism.
Criticism doesn't mean being 'negative'. However, we mustn't demand that criticism seem "friendly". We must only ask that its intentions be constructive. Certain kinds of egoism, insecurities, and social pressures and motivations thwart valid and constructive criticism. We also resist and reject criticism due to processes including 'investment bias'. Social investment, emotional investment, and prior intellectual investment bias will leave us less able to receive the insights of criticisms, unwilling to be less subjective and more objective. Finding out what you're missing or doing wrong is one of the best paths to learning. Well-intended criticisms are not always objective themselves, they must be held accountable as well.
5. Objectivism seems to be as well described by learning how to notice what is being done wrong, as by trying to describe instructions on how to do it. Always trying to find fault and mistakes in thinking, if done correctly and exhaustively, can leave remaining something sound. Studying, and even naming, fallacies and biases yourself is a big part of that. This process can be a compass that may not point directly at where you need to end up, but away from directions that are not objective. That can still be a working compass.
6. Basic instruction on how to conduct objectivism already exists in concepts such as epistemology and skepticism. Epistemology is unique and indispensable. It establishes how solipsism is insanity and how we can most reliably form knowledge.
Objectivism is not mysterious, only neglected, and challenging. More attention to it could provide advanced and new insights.
7. Objectivism MUST be holistic or it's not really objectivism. It must consider any broad implications of the narrowest focuses. It must be our entire being and existence, all concerns and the broadest context. It must not be an objective tool used to subjective ends, the way science often is, for example. It must always hold itself accountable not just to reason but to holistic reason.
Objectivism ideally is expressed with complete devotion to it, and personal promotion of it, but it’s only about being objective. It is inherently anti-dogmatic. It will necessarily conflict with irrational social ideas that we have to speak against. It’s about replacing them with rational social ideas. In preview of a more complete definition, “rational” is the quality of a process that most reliably results in the most desirable outcome. It’s sometimes a more quantitative state of occuring than the binary expression of rational vs irrational.
8. Objectivism here emphasizes contextually 'Applied Objectivism', not 'observational objectivism'. Applied means it produces guidance and insights beyond observational objectivism and doesn't just report on the landscape. The applied kind is more often neglected, misunderstood, and misused, to our great harm. Applied Objectivism must broadly refer to the context of "what is most healthy for intelligent life and the best stewardship of other life". Objectivism is not nihilistic or 'impartial'. It is partial to what is best for life. That is not subjective ! Also, it includes countless subcontexts with narrower or more pedestrian goals. Defining what is best or most healthy must be done objectively as well to provide the goal onto which objectivism is applied.
‘Observational objective’ refers to objective interpretation of observations of physical reality, and of intangible realities such as behaviors. It's fallacious to think objectivism is invalid when it's about intangibles, or when it's the Applied type. Objectivism can be conducted falsely, but it is always uniquely valid conceptually, or when conducted flawlessly.
It's important to objectively conclude, once and forever, that concepts such as nihilism (and solipsism) are insane and destructively antithetical to civilization. They must not just be talking points. They must be known to be invalid. They are ongoingly, repeatedly referenced by everyday people as arguments against civilization ! This is just one example of an educational failure that results from our underutilization of objectivism.
Reason tells us that our individual lives are very important. But reason also dictates a hierarchy. As important as our lives are, the life and future of our entire race is more important still. This is of vital relevance to our concept of civilization.
Individual lives are inseparable from the context of the entire race. The race itself has an ultimate responsibility to itself and all life on Earth. The race has the collective potential of near immortality, which comes with a matching magnitude of responsibility and potential of stewardship and expansion of life in our stellar neighborhood. But if we survive that long, and if that happens, it will only be if we change the course we are on. Our only compass is reason.
We must stop denying or ignoring that hierarchy. Placing utmost importance on the immediate and distant future of our race is not a detractor from our individual interests. If the needs of all of us and future generations seems to be in conflict with our personal interests, that is a clear sign that objectivism is not present. This is in no way an argument against individual rights.
9. It's fallacious to demand that Applied Objectivism must provide answers to dilemmas in order to be objective and legitimate. Actual dilemmas exist and can be imagined, and by definition can't be solved.
10. It's fallacious to demand that Applied Objectivism provide answers to all questions relevant to an issue to be objective. It need only provide an objective step to be objective. Morality, socio-economics, etc must be objectivized, but that can't be done all at once. General progress is partial, but even symbolically placing reason foremost represents a giant leap in progress.
11. Conscious attempts at objectiveness often fail for a variety of reasons, but it's fallacious to think that means it's less profoundly important for us to try, and to not be wholly interested in and wholly committed to it.
12. We may fail to place accountability to reason first because our immediate survival as a race may not depend on it, even though our eventual survival does. Our failure to devote our culture to reason is our root failure, and insidious in this way. It ongoingly reduces our welfare. Technology depends on rational (objective) structure to operate. But people can operate in very unhealthy and ultimately self-destructive ways for extended, but not indefinite, periods. That leads to the end of civilizations, and the journey is miserable. Nihilism insanely argues that “nothing matters” because we all die, and our race will eventually die. But that’s a fatal, self-fulfilling argument, an intellectual pathology. Maybe there aren't too many raging nihilists among us, I don’t know. But maybe just a little nihilism infects our subconscious, like a whispering bias. Opposing it, and subjectivism, with every fiber of our being, is the only chance we have of surviving as long and healthy as possible, and reaching as close to our potential as possible. Essential to that effort is a transformation of the emphasis we place on reason and Applied Objectivism. Today is a good day to start transforming ourselves beyond this age.
Do you think that the goal of reason-based society sounds ideal, but also impossible? There’s a lot more to discuss...