OBJECTIVE REALITY AND OBJECTIVE LIVING
[Here are some highlights, from the perspective of self-realization and self-betterment, of the meaning of the concept of Reality or Existence: the widest, most abstract and fundamental of all concepts, subsuming and integrating all other concepts – yet, at the same time, it’s the most simple, concrete, directly observable concept, seen in each and every thing that’s real and exists. Reality exists all around; it’s all that which is there. One lives in reality and need to know it. One’s rationality, morality, and sanity depend on knowing it.]
Reality. Existence. Reality Exists. Reality is Real. Existence is Real. Existence Exists. A is A.
It’s worth repeating: Existence Exists. The reality of existence and the existence of reality is so fundamental, essential, absolute, so objective and important, it bears restating again and again – to underscore and re-affirm its primacy and its ultimate abstraction of all existents and all real things. It’s in this reality of all real things that we, as knowing beings, live and act, so this objective reality is the axiomatic basis of our real, objective living. Living objectively is living with respect for and in accordance with the reality, objectivity, and primacy of existence.
Reality is all that which exists – all entities, their attributes and actions – existing in all ways, at all times. Reality is _all_ that there is in existence, nothing more and nothing less. Even that which could be real comes from all that which is already real. Causality is reality in action. You can transform reality, i.e., re-arrange things, to re-create reality into a new form of reality, but it’s still something already existing that has changed or formed.
A tree is a tree, not a rock or an elephant. Rivers and landslides move down- not upward. Ice comes from water, not alcohol. Acorns grow into oaks, not tigers. Babies come from mothers. You need to eat in order to live. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Neither love nor reason can be forced. Politicians don’t produce anything good.
Only from something real comes something real. Nothing comes from nothing. There is nothing above, below, before, after, behind, in between, or outside reality. This one reality is all there is. There’s no getting around it. Reality exists, everywhere, everywhen, everyhow, in everywhat. If reality doesn’t really exist, you wouldn’t be here to know that; neither would you be here in the first place. If there is nothing, there is nothing.
Reality exists, reality is real, existence exists – this the deepest you can go in reaching for the most fundamental axiom of all we know and all we do. All proofs and justifications depend on this axiom, which itself requires no proof because its evidence for existence is its existence itself, and because it’s the basis of, and presupposed by, all proofs or by any attempts to deny it. All knowledge and action rest on the basic fact that reality and existence exists, existing prior to our awareness, consciousness, and knowledge of it. Objective reality is the absolute standard of truth for all that we know about existence and about our consciousness of that existence.
Existence precedes consciousness and has primacy over consciousness. Before or without existence, there would be no consciousness. Existence exists even without consciousness. Without mind, there is still matter. Real matter exists regardless of one’s mental awareness or evaluation of it. Whether one knows it or not, whether one likes it or not, existence is the object of consciousness: reality exists as it is: reality exists objectively, independently of minds and selves.
As formulated by Ayn Rand and presented in her Atlas Shrugged, “This is John Galt Speaking”, and in “Axiomatic Concepts”, in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, this is the first axiom of reality, with its corollaries: “Existence Exists. Existence is Identity. Consciousness is Identification”. Existence exists and is identified by consciousness. To know is to know something as it is. Consciousness is conscious of existence by identifying its objective reality: by recognizing reality for what it is, not what one thinks or wishes it to be – by knowing that consciousness is objective Identification of existence, that existence has identity, that existence is identity, that to be is to be something, that a thing is what it is. That A is A.
Something exists or it doesn’t exist. Something cannot exist and not exist at the same time. Either something exists or it doesn’t exist, not both in the same respect. To exist, it must be a real thing, a something that is itself, not another thing in the same way. What things are, the Identity, and what they do, the Causality – This is Reality. Identity, that A is A, that A acts as A, is the starting point of the logic of all objective knowing. Since knowledge is essential to successful living, objective knowledge applied to living is objective living. Objective living is living in accordance with objective reality, with the basic fact that A is A.
Living objectively is acting with true respect for the facts of reality; which is, acting with reason – the human faculty of knowing reality existing as it is. Objective living is rational living; which is to recognize and respect, not evade and reject, the facts and logic of real existence; which is, acting with the virtues of independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness, and pride. Living objectively, being in touch with reality through reason is the way to a successful, happy, moral, and sane life.
How does one live objectively in everyday life? That is the purpose of one’s ethics: to provide a moral code to guide one’s objective rational actions in everyday life. “The Objectivist Ethics”, in The Virtue of Selfishness, by Ayn Rand, is a powerful essay on such an objective ethics. “The Metaphysical and the Man-Made”, in her Philosophy: Who Needs It, is another. Following Rand’s work, detailed presentations of this ethics are in Ayn Rand’s Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist, and Viable Values: A Study of Life as the Root and Reward of Morality, both by Tara Smith, who also delivers speeches on Objectivist Ethics. One recent talk by her is “Objectivity Every Day”, recorded here – (Search the ARI Youtube Channel.)
