Whew!

This stuff can get complicated and take a long time to unpack. I’ve chosen to take a stab at it because I think it’s important and, when unpacked, can help us understand the best way to live our lives.

I want to thank my brother, Grant, and my dear friends Gary and Shack for your contributions to the discussion.

To recap: An Objectivist is one who believes that certain things in the matter of knowledge and morality (the nature of good and evil, right and wrong) can be or are independent of human perception. The Relativist is opposite: these things are humanly constructed and dependent only upon human perceptions. On the largest scale, this conflict is at the center of civilizations and cultures. On the much smaller scale, this conflict is at the core of how we choose to live our lives each day.

Let’s get something out of the way. I think I may have touched on this many months ago in a brief way. It’s the notion of Tolerance.

What are often the competing principles of Freedom and Equality (although they need not be and maybe we’ll eventually get there) have something to say about tolerance. The freedom-oriented person understands the importance of tolerance because we should celebrate the freedom of others to choose to live life as they see fit just as we trust they will respect our right to do so even if we don’t share many beliefs. The equality-oriented person understands the importance of tolerance because I should humbly live side by side with competing ideologies without lording my beliefs over theirs.

Unfortunately, the well-meaning inclination to be tolerant gets perverted when tolerance is elevated to an ideology of its own. It becomes Tolerance, the perfectibility of which is sought and celebrated as its own absolute. Freedom, Equality and Tolerance are the idols upon which we pin our hopes and try to structure out lives, not understanding the inherent ironies and the ultimate fall of the house of cards.

In the name of Freedom, we institute the Reign of Terror (see the French Revolution) and slaughter all in opposition. In the name of Equality, we establish communism and slaughter countless millions who commit the sin of saying maybe I should be able to have my own little garden (see the Soviet Union c.1930). In the name of Tolerance, we oppress and restrain speech and beliefs that do not align with our view of what is right, thereby exemplifying intolerance. These three idols (and they are that, in fact!!!) obfuscate the underlying reality of human existence.

And that is, that freedom, equality and tolerance are means rather than ends. They have both interior lives and exterior lives for us. But none of them is the whole story. None lives in isolation. None is in fact achievable in human existence. They never have been and never will be.

All of us desire limitations on freedom (we act to restrict the desire of the murderer to murder, the rapist to rape and the arsonist to burn). All of us desire limitations on equality (who among us would agree to submit to brain surgery by someone without training who claims to be equal in proficiency to the trained surgeon because, well, he’s just equal?). All of us desire limitations to tolerance (because who among us would tolerate as legitimate the man who says it’s completely justifiable to machine gun my children in order to achieve his ideological objectives?).

But, if we can’t count on these foundational principles to offer secure guidance, what do we do? Well, most of us realize there’s a balance and we try to live in that tension, getting anxious or angry when things swing too far one way or the other according to our line of thinking.

And, that can be well and good enough. All I can say is, it wasn’t for me.

And it certainly isn’t ok for all sorts of other people, some of whom are truly distasteful and with whom I share little or nothing in common with the exception that I believe in absolute truth and am willing to say so. (Unlike all of the people that deny they believe in absolute truth but don’t see the inherent fallacy of making such an absolute statement).

The problem for many people is that they look out at others who claim knowledge of objective truth (Jesus is Lord, Mohammed is the prophet of Allah, Socialism or Marxist-Leninism is the natural and ultimate result of the march of history, the Force is real, etc…) and are repulsed. Often for very good reason, in my opinion! And those very good reasons (many of which I completely share) give objective truth a very bad name. In fact, the result is the belief there can be no objective truth because look what happens when people believe such a dangerous thing. Good point.

Except throwing the baby out with the bathwater is not the solution. One should want to keep the baby, after all.

And, that’s a neat way of summarizing my thirty years of struggle. Not bad, eh? J

Well, just because we need to muck things up a bit more before trying to emerge with some sort of clarity, we have to turn to another conflict that seeks our attention.

And that’s one I’ve touched on before.

Either we are the result of some cosmic natural (non-rational) accidental collision of forces or we’re the result of something akin to intelligence or a creative force that exists outside of observable nature. If the former, we have no meaning outside of what we construct from the particles we are and if the latter, we have some meaning outside of the particles we are. I cannot see a middle ground. This is not to say that humans are incapable of creating meaning on our own but within the first view, the meaning is like smoke: Now you see it and now you don’t. The latter viewpoint looks a little like Mt. Everest. It was here before we were born, is undeniably a very big thing and will be here long after we die. The former is ephemeral. The latter is permanent. The former says we are born from meaninglessness and die into meaninglessness. The latter says we are born into meaning and die into meaning.

These two competing viewpoints struggle for out attention and just like with Freedom, Equality and Tolerance, what we can call Naturalism on the one hand and Spiritualism, Faith, or Religion on the other hand make it a fine soup for us to make heads or tails out of.

But choosing heads or tails we do. Or at least we try.

In fact, we’re doing it all of the time, either actively or passively, knowingly or unknowingly.

If science and reason make the concept of an all powerful personal God obsolete (as many claim) then why are so many brilliant and top scientists believers in a personal God and why are so many other such believers gifted philosophers and logicians?

Oh, is my bias showing?

My point here is that buying into ultimate meaning/objective truth can be both an act of reason and faith (they are not mutually exclusive) just as choosing the alternative of naturalism/relativism is an act of reason and faith.

Just be careful what you wish for.

And, let no one evade this decision. An evasion is the only thing that is dishonest. To say you don’t care is dishonest. Of course we care. (I’m not directing this at you the reader but just as a generality.) We care about right and wrong. Good and bad or good and evil. We probably think we normally can tell it when we see it. Until it gets confusing.

Maybe young people don’t think about dying that much but most older people do. And, no one doesn’t care. And, I wouldn’t believe it if they told me so. The prospect of being permanently snuffed from existence in any form requires a certain kind of opinion and behavior prior to death, just as the prospect of somehow surviving in some form after what we call death requires a different kind of opinion and behavior before hand.

Why do I insist that an evasion of the issues framed by this discussion is basically dishonest? It’s because we are naturally afraid of what we will find once we go down one road or the other. And well we should be.

I’ll say that again, we should be afraid of what we’ll find if we decide to discover what underlies our judgments about what is right or wrong, good or bad, good or evil. And I don’t discriminate about the direction. It’s sound reasoning to fear what lies at the end of each road.

I don’t say this lightly. When it comes to trying to figure out the basis for making our judgments, we can try to balance objectivism and relativism for some things (as I do and know that many do, rightfully), but in the end we must abandon one for the other. We’re left no alternative. We are born. We live. We die. What’s the point? And, even deeper, what’s the meaning beyond the point?

The frustration for science is there’s no answer to the point, other than procreation. We live to procreate. One might ask what’s the point to procreation and the only answer is to live. OK. That certainly means that we’re on the plane of an amoeba or a fungi. Adherents to the ideology/religion of Gaia believe in the objective truth that all life is basically the same. We’re all, practically speaking, the same organism. (This is really in vogue right now.)

So, science can define a point but is incapable of articulating a meaning beyond what it is and nothing else. One thing is the same as everything.

This is in the realm of something called Epistemology, the theory of Knowledge … an esoteric field for most people and really the basis for my Master’s degree.

The relativist ultimately stands on quicksand, believing it’s solid ground. Sort of like being in The Matrix. Relying on ever changing standards at the whim of opinion, they end up reaping what they sow. “You have no right to refer to that person with a Y chromosome as male because he/she/it says he/she/it is a female or something that is neither.” To say that is to be intolerant with an objective truth claiming primacy over a social construction of reality. “I am black because I want to be black.” “I endured shelling in battle,” because that would advance my career. “That courageous and suffering POW is a coward because I say so.” What they reap is a calamity of doubt and heightened anxiety as people search for something upon which to honestly live their lives.

The objectivist stands on rock that, in fact, can prove to be made of dust. In the West, we’re born into relativism and, in our post-modern age, it is our collective lodestar. Hence objectivists are viewed as a kind of alien force that will corral us into a place that destroys our independence. As many objectivists disdain those who don’t see pure truth as they do, we rightfully rebel against much of their dogmatism and view of truth that doesn’t match much of what we perceive to be true.

Where to go? What can we count on? How do we sift through all of the muck? Our world is awash in these battles which are played out in war zones, inner cities and farms, schools and universities and churches, in laboratories and boardrooms, in Silicon Valley and Appalachia, on magazine covers, TV shows and movies, in social media and traffic intersections.

What does History tell us? What do Literature and Art tell us? What do science and reason tell us? What do sunsets, rainbows and nebulae tell us? What does love tell us?

I have begun an essay on Integrity. I hope to finish it sometime soon. Integrity is the opposite of hypocrisy. It means living a truth without concern for the consequences.

I have come to the conclusion that some things are true regardless of what people (including me) think or want to think. I don’t arrive at this lightly as it’s a most humbling conclusion. I have a pretty good antenna for falsehood, even when packaged as truth. Sometimes it takes a lot of work to sift through the layers of deception. I fear that many people don’t have the patience or will to do so constantly. I fear the devaluation of the virtues I wrote about recently, pieces of the truth I hold so dear.

Next, I’ll try to more concretely tie all of this stuff to things that are important to us like politics and government, schools, churches and whatever else I can think of!