The fanatic and the ghost

Let us first consider a life of pure weight, unconstrained by the lightness of Enlightenment individualism. In its pure form, this is the life of the fanatic and slave. The life of weight is a life lived in service to values that transcend it, and in terms of which it is to be judged. As we have seen, the concept of individualism is made up of the ideas of autonomy and self-realization. The life of pure weight has no room for either of these ideas. The life one must choose is already determined by these objective and independent values. If one fails to reflect these values in one's thoughts and deeds, then one's life is, accordingly, deficient. You have not only failed your values, you have thereby also failed yourself. To the extent that such a life has any room for free choice or expression, this can occupy only the interstices of these values: the small, and therefore largely insignificant, areas of life in which these values hold no sway. In every major aspect of life, these objective and independent values specify both what you should think and what you should do, and to the extent you do not think or do what these values specify, both you and your life are inadequate.

We saw earlier how objectivism has its natural degenerate form: fundamentalism – objectivism without the argument or evidence. A corresponding degeneration will inevitably occur in a life of pure weight. A life lived in service to values is a life that ultimately becomes incapable of questioning those values. Accordingly, the values that this life reveres will stagnate. Since they are not refreshed by critical enquiry, since they are not constantly reinforced by the need to defend them through logic, argument and evidence, they will soon solidify into dead dogma. The life of pure weight soon becomes a dogmatic joke of a life.