I have noted any number of conflicting goods above. The one of particular importance to me is abortion. Why? Because this was the issue that nudged me into abandoning objectivism myself. How? By forcing me to recognize that “baby steps to progress” can be reasonably construed from both ends of the moral/political continuum – re either the natural right of the unborn to life or the political right of women to choose to terminate that life.
Conflicting goods construed precisely from a point of view – rooted in dasein – deemed either “for the better” or “for the worse”.
To which you note:
Again, I can only imagine you at a Planned Parenthood clinic noting this to the folks inside the facility and to the protesters outside of it. How on earth do you imagine them reacting to it? After all, what are you really saying here pertaining to all of the many, many, many particular sets of circumstances that might bring folks to those clinics?
Indeed, this [in my view] is really where you want all of it to go. You’ve got this general idea “in your head” about how the human species should end up “in the future”. You’ve reasoned out a set of assumptions regarding space travel and if all the baby steps taken by all the folks on all the sides of the issue here and now converge on your own general description of “humanity’s interactions” there and then, the “Morality Quotient” of the average person will have converged in turn.
If only [for now] in your head.
The species will survive. But only on your terms. And [of course] this is precisely the frame of mind that all of the other objectivists [moral, political, philosophical, theological etc.] embrace in turn. You are all entirely in agreement about an optimal future. It’s just that, in the present, you are all hopelessly conflicted regarding how to get there.
But so what, right? As you note:
Whose “feasible model”? Feasible in what sense? Based on what set of assumptions? Reconfigured into what actual set of laws?
Well, from my frame of mind, you are not really responding to the point that I raise. It is as though you are arguing that only when the philosopher-kings have established the ideal human interactions should all the rest of us go about the business of embodying them. The irony here being that, for folks like Plato, this included slavery.
Once the Republic is deduced into existence, it is only a matter of everyone recognizing just how philosophically seamless it all is. A place for everyone and everyone in his or her place. The flesh and blood interactions wholly in sync with a general description of the human condition.
This in other words:
I guess we’re stuck then. I won’t go up there and you won’t come down here. At least not in the manner in which [in our own way] we have come to understand the distinction.
And unless we can figure out a way to meld the two approaches, I suspect we will just go on spinning our wheels.