[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Oberon

I think I get what you mean, and I think we're both on a level agreeing on something but we keep missing our connection. Certainly I agree on the existence of Context-values, however I believe that Context-values are far greater in number than you seemed to originally indicate, and that the three indicators I brought up earlier, era, nation and experience directly affect the Context-value, hence why in a nation that is at war, you will get conscientious objectors, who will refuse to be drafted even if it means a prison sentence. In the era of the Great War, the Context-value was that Conscientious objectors were criminals who undertook treason by refusing to serve the state in a time of need, today they are looked upon quite differently. Even by the Second World War, a difference of only twenty-one years, the attitude towards Conscientious objectors had changed by a fair amount, there were still prison sentences but at a lower rate than in the war before. The Context-value had changed, only slightly, but it had changed in the space of twenty-one years.

Of course, as you correctly say, this is not something that really applies to current every day life because we are all bound by our own Context-values as defined by era, nation and experience, to perceive the world in our own ways. I know what is right and what is wrong because I was taught, both by my parents and by society and the state, just as all those who have come before me have been taught their versions of right and wrong, stretching back to the era of the dawn of man.
But yes, taken at face value, the sentence is strong, strong enough to inspire our conversation, and at the end of the day, that is what, in my opinion, works like Atlas Shrugged are all about, inspiring thought. (although I must add as a disclaimer that I have not actually read Atlas Shrugged beyond its wikipedia page, but it is on my lengthy list of books to get around to reading one day)

Oberon,

I was sent an email with the following quote from the novel, another Aha!-experience, it matches our conversation nicely. I am not deep enough into the book to already have read it, but he said it is from later in the book.

The man who refuses to judge, who neither agrees nor disagrees, who declares that there are no absolutes and believes that he escapes responsibility, is the man responsible for all the blood that is now spilled in the world. Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube.

Matches my feelings.