Yes, There Are Objective Standards

The existence of objective standards threatens power, and so it has been ridiculed and excluded from open consideration.

Reality, however, cannot be changed, and the fact is that we all act for life and against death. So does every other living thing on this planet. That makes life and death objective, definable standards. 

Actions trump words, they trump ridicule, and they trump academic theories.The absolute standard of life as good is upheld, in actual practice, by every person who takes medicine or by anyone who avoids danger. Oceans of rhetoric can’t negate this. We and every other creature on this planet act to stay alive and to flee death.

And so those trying to fight against absolute, objective standards betray themselves every time they take an antibiotic or buy organic produce.

Accordingly, these statements stand:

That which sustains and extends life is good or right.

That which hinders or ends life is bad or wrong.

Why All The Opposition?

Our need to extend and improve life has driven more or less every medical, technological and agricultural improvement of human history. Why, then, would anyone want to exclude it?

The first answer is that they simply don’t see it. They’ve come to see an abstract, constructed reality as the whole playing field of life, and are struggling to find status within it. 

A second answer is the more important one:

Life, if held to and pursued, negates power structures.

Life spawns chosen, decentralized and organic organization. Power structures, on the other hand, require humans (life-bearing beings) to be constrained: they require automatic compliance and couldn’t survive any other way.

The lords of the abstract and constructed reality, then, must keep life and those using it within their constraints. They fear the recognition of an objective standard because it would make auto-compliance nearly impossible.

Life-spawned organization is everywhere, of course: It’s the way healthy families organize themselves. It’s how small businesses organize themselves. It’s the way little leagues and book clubs and tutoring clubs and a hundred similar groups organize themselves. This is the model of chosen grouping, and it injects life, decency and progress into the world.

The lords of the constructed reality require enforced grouping. They forbid, by any number of means, alternatives to themselves.

That fact should condemn them right off, except that most people have been confused and conditioned otherwise… they’ve been taught (by the constructed reality) that the construct is the only reality, and that advocates for anything else are maniacs. 

The constructed reality, then, must destroy its opponents, beginning with God, who would be the ultimate objective standard. It must also trivialize life, which also stands as an absolute standard. 

And So…

And so, if life is a good value, we should act to extend and enhance it. We do that by using life-friendly tools like chosen grouping, voluntary trade, honest money, unhindered innovation and the virtues which accompany these things.

We also do that by stepping away from the constructed reality: the virtual world of manufactured images, narratives and fears.

Fear, as I’ve noted often but probably not often enough, is a brain hack: It chains people within the construct: where they’re informed, endlessly, that they must believe what they’re told, because everyone else does.

Life in the construct, then, becomes all virtual, all vicarious and all externally-derived. It is the antithesis of the model of Jesus, Jung and more or less every other independent thinker. 

The alternative to the construct is to build a chosen society, centered on the golden rule. This model is known to work for us, being, again, the model of the healthy family, the productive small business and so on. Our way is the better way: the way that takes life as an objective standard.

Because it is.

**

Paul Rosenberg

freemansperspective.com

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