"Reality is not your enemy, truth and knowledge are of
crucial, personal, selfish importance
to you and to your own life."
- Ayn Rand
Objectivity
"Objectivity begins with the realization that man (including his every attribute and faculty, including his consciousness) is an entity of a specific nature who must act accordingly; that there is no escape from the law of identity, neither in the universe with which he deals nor in the working of his own consciousness, and if he is to acquire knowledge of the first, he must discover the proper method of using the second; that there is no room for the arbitrary in any activity of man, least of all in his method of cognition—and just as he has learned to be guided by objective criteria in making his physical tools, so he must be guided by objective criteria in forming his tools of cognition: his concepts.
Most people . . . think that abstract thinking must be “impersonal”—which means that ideas must hold no personal meaning, value or importance to the thinker. This notion rests on the premise that a personal interest is an agent of distortion. But “personal” does not mean “nonobjective”; it depends on the kind of person you are. If your thinking is determined by your emotions, then you will not be able to judge anything, personally or impersonally. But if you are the kind of person who knows that reality is not your enemy, that truth and knowledge are of crucial, personal, selfish importance to you and to your own life—then, the more passionately personal the thinking, the clearer and truer.
Read more about Objectivity @: Ayn Rand Lexicon
Primacy of Existence vs. Primacy of Consciousness
They want to cheat the axiom of existence and consciousness, they want their consciousness to be an instrument not of perceiving but of creating existence, and existence to be not the object but the subject of their consciousness - they want to be that god they created in their image and likeness, who creates a universe out of a void by means of an arbitrary whim. But reality is not to be cheated. What they achieve is the opposite of their desire. They want an omnipotent power over existence; instead they lose the power of their consciousness. By refusing to know, they condemn themselves to the horror of a perpetual unknown.
Read more about Existence vs. Consciousness @: Ayn Rand Lexicon
