Objective Morality

I am a moderate and yet I am mostly an objective moral realist. This may seem fuzzy, contradictory or muddled-thinking, but it really is not. God exists and God is love. God is a moderate too so the divine moral code and natural law which God constructed and bestowed upon us earthlings as our code to guide our thoughts, decisions and actions. This code mostly is objective and yet it is also intrinsic (like Platonic Forms) and subjective and conventional. Moderation is not equivalent to relativism or the stance that anything goes. Still, a clear, crisp, effable moral code to live by is a must for human survival, for human happiness, for humans to be allowed by God to enter the kingdom of heaven after death.

The State Of Yale University

I get a free electronic newsletter sent to my gmail account from The Washington Free Beacon. Below enclosed is their article which was written on 9/18/26 by Eliana Johnson. I copied and pasted it below and will comment on it. Here it is: “ Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more An F for Yale University President Maurie McInnis Eliana Johnson Sep 18 Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more An F for Yale University President Maurie McInnis Eliana Johnson Sep 18 READ IN APP (American Enterprise Institute YouTube) Yale University president Maurie McInnis released a report in late April from a committee on trust in higher education that acknowledged the issues afflicting the Ivy League, from exploding tuition to runaway grade inflation and theatrically intolerant student activists. But the question remained: What would Yale do about it?” My response: Exploding tuition, runaway grade inflation, and theatrically intolerant student activists (woke true believers for their cherished cause of cultural Marxism). Academia is barely functioning, and Dennis Prager warns that it is near impossible for our youth to be sent their and not be culturally and morally corrupted by the conformist insanity which they are inundated with. Johnson: “ McInnis appeared at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday afternoon to answer that question. “And yet she couldn’t quite say how Yale is going to tackle this problem,” our editors write. On admissions, McInnis defended Yale’s holistic approach against a “test-based system” because Yale doesn’t want undergraduate classes in which “maybe everybody’s going to want to be a physics major.” (We would like to see the meritocratic, test-based system that produces an entire class of physics majors as opposed to a class of students with diverse academic interests.)” My response: Yes, we need to return to a meritocratic, test-based system which all have to compete inside of. Johnson: “Rather, she said, “I want to be sure that we both have physics majors and arts majors, that we have people who play on 1 of our 35 Division I athletic teams or play in our Yale Symphony Orchestra.” Yale has furtively brought back the requirement, starting this fall, that all applicants must submit ACT or SAT scores. But informed observers aren’t buying that Yale has truly reformed its ways. … McInnis’s response to how Yale will tackle grade inflation was similarly dispiriting. While we might think it’s “easy to fix grade inflation,” she said, it actually requires “multiple institutions,” as well as “K-12,” because Yale students arrive on campus so fragile they are actually incapable of receiving anything but an A. Students “have never seen anything other than an A their entire lives, and it can be really challenging for the faculty who are the first trying to give that student that grade that is not an A,” she said. Maybe it’s time for a committee on faculty fragility?” My response: If professors or students are too psychologically or emotionally fragile to not be given an A when the student doesn’t earn it or deserve it, it is time to kick that student and professor out of college. Johnson: “ Were Yale to implement an honest grading regime, she added, “What you would hear from the students are [sic] ‘Well then, you’re putting me at a disadvantage when I apply to medical school. You’re putting me at a disadvantage when I apply for other sorts of graduate and professional schools.’ So that’s why it kind of needs to be a collective conversation.”” My response: The school is not putting an underachiever or low performer at a disadvantage: by their own laziness, they have put themselves at a disadvantage and cannot be coddled, though they are young adults—it is time to grow up and quickly, taking responsibility for one’s poor choices and lackluster academic effort. Johnson: “ We don’t believe for a moment that graduate and professional schools wouldn’t take into account what a Yale GPA really means were the institution to chart its own course, just as Yale itself takes into account what GPAs really mean from more and less rigorous high schools across the country. But that would mean standing up to activist and entitled students, something McInnis evidently isn’t yet prepared to do. Don’t worry, though, there is a committee, and “we will see what comes out of this committee.”” My response: Student activists and entitled students need to grow up and mature, and earn the grade or flunk, full stop. Johnson: “ The Washington Free Beacon awards this performance no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

The Duty

 

I read many things, and I enjoy Agatha Christie novels. I will quote from her book, Murder Is Easy, and then comment on and develop the theme of her quote.

The murdered doctor’s wife, Mrs. Humbleby warned amateur detect Fitzwilliam that great danger was afoot: “She said, rather unexpectedly, ‘The world is a very wicked place, Mr. Fitzwilliam. Do you know that?’”

My response: Being a Christian and a Victorian, Mrs. Humble by firmly believes in good and evil as real forces at work in the world, at work spiritually, morally, socially, naturally—and that is my view too.

Christie: “Luke was a little surprised. ‘Yes, perhaps that may be.’

She insisted, ‘No, but do you know it? It’s important, that. There’s a lot of wickedness about. One must be prepared – to fight it. John was. He knew. He was on the side of right..’

Luke said gently, ‘I’m sure he was.”

‘He knew the wickedness there was in this place,’ said Mrs. Humbleby.’”

My response: She lays out a moral program which the good Christian is to practice in this Vale Of Tears. She is to believe that evil exists, and that Jesus, God and the good deities lay a moral duty on us to believe such, know such, and to fight such. One is to fight evil, one must be a soldier of God on the side of right, pushing back the darkness and cruelty of evil, for this is the Devil’s world, and we are born sinners. We run in packs, and Satan owns our groups, our group-living, our altruist ethics, so this wickedness is entrenched and institutionalized, widespread, enduring, persistent, almost impossible to dislodge.

Dennis Prager, our wise, decent Jewish elder and mentor, had made a claim nearly identical to the one made by Mrs. Humbleby: That we are not just to be good and loving, but are here to fight evil openly, officially and relentlessly, that is what it means to be good and that may be the primary route to heaven.

I agree with all these views and conclusions and I have incorporated these points within developing my moral system, Mavellonialism.

Now let me point out how clever Satan is: I believe he is most effective when his most ardent followers do not know they are working for him, whose motive is selfless love of humanity, operating and acting to make the world a better place, all for humanity which they do and avow that they love.

The fanatical idealist is cable of utter viciousness and murderous, genocidal violence against those standing in the way of the implementation of his program. This true believer is a lethal, living demon who would be shocked to realize what he is, and how his efforts fail miserably at making the world a much better place.

My conclusion: Yes, fight wickedness, but remain modest, humble and detached as to one’s own capacity to be violent even to kill In the 20^th century, historically unprecedented killing was done in the name of idealism and reform, so this motive to fight evil and do good is easily inverted and one serve Satan rather than fights Satan.

Hoffer's Working And Thinking On The Waterfront June 1958--May 1959, Pages 31-36

 

I am writing out each paragraph in Eric Hoffer’s book, Working And Thinking On the Waterfront June 1958—May 1959, Pages 31-36. I will comment as I go. Here it is: Hoffer (H after this): “August 27

Eight hours on the same ship. Steady grind all day long, and I had neither the time or the inclination to write a line.

August 27

In the morning on the bus I heard a Negro longshoreman argue that the ‘No Smoking’ signs are put up by the fire insurance companies. Pretty soon they will have ‘No Smoking’ signs inside the house, even in the bedroom. In other countries people smoke wherever they please but here the insurance companies are running things.

I haven’t had a good look at the bay all day. The feeling of being rushed drains the capacity for enjoying things.”

My response: Ever the intuitive genius and philosopher, Hoffer seems right that being rushed drains the capacity for enjoying things. I much endorse and favor our capitalist American economic system, bustling and hard work, but a civilized people, a maverizing people, need to stop and smell the roses some once in awhile too.

H: “In the morning I read an article by Max Nomad ‘Masters Old and New.’ Writing in 1937, he clearly discerns the intelligentsia as the coming elite in both capitalist and non-capitalist countries. But the article is without a hint of the intellectual’s role in history, and the significance of his dramatic comeback in the twentieth century.”

My response: Both Nomad and Hoffer, both Jews (Hoffer an illegal Jewish immigrant from Bavaria to America?), both very isolated intellectuals, separately and independently concluded that intellectuals were dangerous participants in and often rulers of elites controlling society or out to overthrow the existing elite. They love power and dominance and their cruelty corresponds to how far they must go to get and keep accumulated power.

Hoffer the original thinker goes beyond Nomad and suggests that intellectuals paid an unrecognized role in history, and that they coming to the fore in the 20^th century poses real

hazardous conditions, if left unchecked, for the masses everywhere.

I looked up Max Nomad in Wikipedia, and they quote this paragraph which he wrote and which I would like to, as an aside, comment on. Here it is: “I remain a lone-wolf philosophical anarchist whose sympathies go out to the poorest of the poor struggling for more and more of the good things of life. But I feel akin only to those rebellious but politically unattached intellectuals who dream of justice and an equal chance for everybody, but know, as I do, that, given the eternal recurrence of predatory elites, and the incurable ignorance and gullibility of the masses, a privileged and educated minority will always rule and exploit the uneducated majority.[4]”

My response: Note that Nomad is a lone wolf like Hoffer, though he is a reformer and Hoffer is not, at least not politically though he is a moralist.

Nomad is a reformer for bettering the living conditions of the poor and downtrodden, but accurately has appraised wicked, fatalistic human nature as dooming people to the eternal recurrence of predatory elites of all stripes everywhere and always running things and running rough shod over the incurably gullible, ignorance, compliant, masochistic, prideless (lacking the positive pride of self-esteeming) masses. Thus a privileged and educated minority will always rule and exploit the uneducated majoirty.

Actually the masses as individuating anarchists supercitizens will break the recurring, unjust pattern.

H: “August 28

Eight hours on the same ship. We follow the ship tomorrow to Alaneda. The hard work during the last three days is affecting my stomach. Something gets tied up in a knot when I strain my guts. I shall try to straighten it out tonight by drinking hot tee and relaxing.

August 29

Finally finished the ship. Eight and a half hours in Alameda. I am weary and on edge. I must slow down or even stop work for a week.

I must get hold of a biography of Bentham. His transition from a preoccupation with the all-seeing eye (panopticon0 to the promotion of the general welfare is an instance of the intimate connection between the intimate connection between the intellectual’s idealism and his innermost craving for a role of supervision (Vision and Supervision).”

My response: We are to beware of and always oppose idealists promoting their program or cause for through its acceptance in society, they seek to grab concentrated power to rule the masses. Same old story.

H: “September 1

I just read the introduction to Men of Words. It is not bad. I also copied Sections 8 to 11. I have so far 40 pages of manuscript. The things is crude and fragmented, bit it is a beginning.

September 3

Eight hours on the Arizona Maru at Pier 24. An easy day, and I am off tomorrow. My head worked in spasms. The beginning of Part 2 must tackle the problem of the optical milieu for literature. I shall trace the chain of events which led to the appearance of written literature in Egypt, Sumer, Palestine, Greece, and China. But the main thing is to outline the conditions optimal for literary creativeness.

After all, the chief value of history is not that it helps us understand the present or decipher the future but that it furnishes us with clues concerning the manner in which man is affected by his natural and social environment. We cannot experiment with humanity, but history is a record of how man reacted to variety of conditions.”

My response: I approve of and concur with Hoffer that history can offer us clues and perhaps a record of how human should react to change and not react to change.

H: “September 4

I have said it again and again. The only thing that will cure the Negro’s ills is that the Negro community perform something that will win it the admiration of the world. Yet it is difficult to see what this something might be. A Negro revolt in Mississippi; a desperate battle to the last man, a Negro Alamo. Or an excellent negro school for song and dance. Or an excellent trade school. Or a model organization for mutual help. It is the slow, hard way, and the indications are that the Negro will not take it.”

My response: Is it not that blacks cannot collectively or individually step up their game: they can if they will and I hope all people of all races and ethnic groups collectively and individually step up their game even more so, choosing to foster individuation among the young.

H: “He would rather derive pride from an identification with the achievement of colored races elsewhere. Yet I doubt whether even a triumphant Ghana could ever be to the Negro in America what Israel has been to the Jews.

The crucial question is whether the Negro will ever give up his alibi of discrimination.”

My response: Alibis hold all down and back, not just blacks. The individualist is one who shreds all of his alibis along the path of discovering and realizing his identity and talents. This blacks must do to of they will be made whole.

H: “

You do not give up the imperishable advantage of an alibi for the short-lived exhilaration of achievement. (Our successes only buoy us for a short time and then we must evolve further to remain self-esteeming, Ed Says.) There is trouble ahead. For the less justified the Negro’s alibi the more passionately will he cling to it, and the louder he will voice his grievances.

Were I a genuine American I would believe in the possibility of the automatic absorption of twenty million Negroes into the body of American life; that almost overnight, without special effort or an intermediate phase, the Negro in America can become a human being first and only secondly a Negro.”

My response: Over thirty million blacks will not be fully absorbed into the body of American life until the black in America can be a human being first (As a human being a person is a unique person who could maverize if she willed to be a person separate and distinct from their racial and ethnic identification.

H: “September 16

Seven and a half hours discharging cargo at Pier 17. It was very hot but work did not seem irksome. One of the reasons is that I got a good night’s sleep, and my partner (Juan Gonzales) though not much of a worker is a pleasant person to be with.

In the morning while eating breakfast, it occurred to me that the equivalent of a Khrushchev in the West is to be found not among the politicians but among the businessmen. A Communist regime is capitalism gone berserk. It is incredible how many insights one obtains while viewing a ruling Communist party as a company of merchant adventurers lodge in the body of a backward country.

During the day a winch driver I knew only by sight came over to talk. He started out with the union but immediately passed over to his own affairs. He must have been married for a long time since he has two grandchildren. His wife now is partly paralyzed, and as he talked I could sense the despair and bitterness simmering inside him. The must have been slovenly, lazy and self-centered even while she was well, and now paralyzed she is a millstone around his neck.”

My response: It is often observed and commented that we never know the private hell and suffering another person is enduring or struggling against, or perhaps is being defeated by. All we can do is commiserate, be a good friend, and pray for them, maverick to make sure we don’t make a mess of our lives, so we are then a burden to our family, friends, loved ones and the taxpayer.

H: “September 29

What is the optimal milieu for creativeness in literature, art, music, etc.? It is a milieu that rewards excellence. Cosmo the Elder reverenced talent the way the pious revere saints.”

My response: My version of what would be the optimal milieu for creativeness being fostered, rewarded, encouraged and promoted would be a milieu, familial, cultural and social, which identifies the self-realizing individual as the primary locus and vehicle for the creation of excellence, brilliance and originality in society. A society which bolsters the individuating individual as its norm, its mode of behaving and acting for its average, typical citizen, that is a society which rewards and reveres excellence, and the people mostly will live up to high high, noble standard of expected behavior and performance.

H: “When the Arab civilization was at its height, the Ommiad caliphs gave poets and scholars precedence over officials, and some of them were governors of provinces. To Louis XIV a good sentence was a major achievement.

In an optimal milieu there is considerable leisure. When the people are engrossed in some feverish pursuit so that they are neither bored, nor dream dreams, nor nurse grievances, creativeness will be anemic.”

My response: I believe Hoffer is an authority and expert of the first rank as to setting up a milieu optimum for fostering creativeness, but I believe a deeper motive would lead each of the masses, if they learn to esteem themselves, think for themselves and choose to maverize, then they are optimally motivated for internal reasons to take advantage of the ideal milieu Hoffer has discovered.

Finally, an optimal milieu is one in which the creative are in close intercourse with each other—hating, loving, envying, admiring; where faces flush, hearts flutter, and minds swell with the passion to rival and emulate.

September 30

The Embarcadero Freeway is building rapidly, yet one rarely sees more than three workingmen on the job. There are, of course, more than three, but the organization of the work is such that no one stands around. The same holds true on other jobs. Though it would be difficult to prove that the American workingman is the best in the world, it is nevertheless true that the American way of doing things is determined largely by the American workingman’s attitude toward work.’

My response: America, with its capitalist economy, its individualism, its love of working and its vitality for life, fostered a work culture of being organized, resourceful, innovative and productive working men and working women. That was California in 1958, not in 2026. See what the wrong values have wrought there, and everywhere in America.

H: “I do not know how it is with workingmen elsewhere, but I cannot see an American workingman fitting in and feeling at home anywhere outside this country.

I am beginning to believe that I shall never finish the book on the intellectuals. I am making no headway and the outline I have done does not help much. It is a peculiar situation: the material I have collected on the intellectual can be used in connection with all manner of topics but not with the intellectual as such.”

The Balance

 

I think the individuator, on average, would be a person of solid common sense, and moderate judgment. One way to construe this would be that he would be idealistic, ever out to improve things, all while living in the world, allowing his practical sense and material needs to be bet without guilt or flinching or refusing to work for his daily bread.

They Go Together

 

There are lots of interesting Prager U interviews now in late 2026, and with Dennis at reduced capacity, Marissa Streit has come to the fore. She was interviewing someone recently, and one of them repeated a comment from the late, great Charlie Kirk that hit me like a ton of bricks, as original and profound,. Kirk had said that faith and freedom go together, and that just intuitively seems correct to me.

God is a God of love, and gave us free will to worship De if we will, as we will—though there are consequences for our choices. God had made it a metaphysical axiom for reality, likely for all eternity that faith and freedom are connected, and go intimately together, that we cannot have one without the other. I would throw in love and reasoning as well for good measure.

It seems to me that if faith, freedom, love and reasoning go together, then adding egoist-altruist ethics together should bind them together even more tightly.

Imagine how free and healthy and equalizing it would be if this togetherness principle guided our political relations, informal and formal, ad hoc and structural.

Where Values Take Root

 

Where do values take root? Where do they come from? The answer may be complex and multifaceted, and it probably is, but I am supplying three answers, rather a simple response at that.

God is the great deity, A Being whose near perfect nature is love and spiritual and moral goodness, all in one and all that the same time. Humans being born sinful and fragile, but still of free will empowerment and endowment, lack the instincts to know what to value, what to choose, and how to act, based on their feelings, their intuition, their instincts. These rational beings require a moral code—preferably egoism—s standard against which to measure, to compare and contrast potential moral choices to realize the right choices to make and how to act. God is the first and primary source of these moral codes like the Ten Commandments.

Nature is the second source and of secondary importance to providing people with instinctual or hunch-engendered preference as to how to carry on, how to choose.

Nature can also serve as a moral laboratory for humans to study to know how to live. For example in Switzerland, if a squirrel gathers and stores or hides nuts so it has food to survive the winter, the farmer could observe these behavior and conclude that he should set aside farm foodstuffs so his family will not starve to death in the pending winter on his doorstep.

Third, from society and/or history we can observe how our ancestors lived, and if we were smart, we could learn what to do and how to live to flourish and be happy, and what is the outcome of ignoring or flouting these wise practices by ancestors.