The Belief of Autonomous Man, That "Values" are Subjective, is False

                                           Milton's Satan, Paradigm of Autonomous Man

    Therefore a pillar of modern culture is false. The Good is grounded in reality. When we find something truly beautiful, we are not merely projecting our feelings onto the blank screen of a meaningless, beauty-less nature or work, but responding in our human way to something very real. Or when some of us are saddened and disturbed by the brutality inflicted on animals in the meat industry, we respond to the violation of the real animals; we don’t project feelings onto the blank screen of the animals because we enjoy being disturbed (unless we are sentimental). If we believed we were projecting feelings – that we were sentimental – then the ground of our sadness would be removed. When the victims of war crimes cry out for justice, it is because violence, terrible wrong has been done to real human beings. We don’t project our horror onto beings that are objectively without value or meaning. If that is what we believed, then our horror would mean nothing. If we hurt a friend, our remorse is not just a social evolutionary mechanism to ensure the survival of the species. Our remorse is a response to our friend and the real hurt we caused them.

       When we value something, when in thought or action we respond to anything according to some judgment or pre-judgment of what it is and its true value, we respond to reality, adequately or inadequately. To conform our minds, hearts, lives to real people, places, and things seems to me worth striving for. To want to make ourselves the creator and judge of value is to want to become like God – or better, like Milton’s Satan: “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”