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Editor’s note: The following is the full text of Robin Field’s Reason in Rhyme: A Philosophic Oratorio. Mr. Field composed this work in the 1970s and performed it with piano and in song throughout the ’80s and ’90s. For more about Mr. Field, his ideas, and his work, see “Robin Field on Objectivism and the Performing Arts” in the Summer 2016 issue of TOS. And be sure to enjoy the YouTube video of Mr. Field performing Reason in Rhyme, which you can find by searching his name. It’s a masterpiece. —Craig Biddle
Author’s note: As an entertainment, Reason in Rhyme is an entirely original work, and I am solely responsible for the ideas expressed here. However, I would like to acknowledge the enormous influence of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, which serves as the theoretical basis of my work.
Three Questions
I’d like to ask three questions,
Ask what they mean to you:
What is so?
How do you know?
And so, what should you do?
The answers are elusive.
It’s quite a lot to chew.
What is so?
How do we know?
And so, what should we do?
Philosophers refer to them
Like this (without apology):
One is Metaphysics,
And two, Epistemology,
And number three is Ethics,
Or the science of morality.
These questions hold the key to
Man’s relation to reality.
My object is to deal with them
In poetry and song.
One is Truth,
One is Proof,
And one is Right and Wrong.
Your answers guide your thoughts and deeds
Your whole life long.
Everyone Has a Philosophy
Everyone has a philosophy,
Whether he knows it or not.
Some people fancy philosophy,
Some think it isn’t so hot.
Theirs, they believe, is to follow it,
Not to agree or oppose.
Their only choice is to swallow it,
Wincing and holding their nose.
Most people feel that philosophy’s
Something they can’t understand,
So they absorb their philosophies
Out of the culture at hand,
Letting it dictate propriety,
Dictate what’s false and what’s true,
Leaving the job to society
(As if society knew).
Why should you study philosophy,
With all there is to pursue?
Simply because your philosophy
Underlies all that you do.
Why bother checking your premises?
Why should you make that a goal?
Premises can be your Nemesis
If they’re not under control.
What is regarded as knowledge is
Garbage we’ve got to outgrow.
That which is taught in our colleges
Ain’t necessarily so!
Let me review for the curious
What the philosophers thought.
Don’t be surprised if you’re furious
That this is still being taught:
Philosophers
Philosophers are men who think
In purest fundamentals,
Like Buddha and Confucius,
Who confused the Orientals.
They taught by means of paradox
That man is meant to suffer,
That life and death are just the same,
Except that life is tougher.
While Thales taught in Ancient Greece
And called his school Milesian,
The Weeper, Heraclitus, taught
That things have no cohesion.
Pythagoras decided
Mathematics would cohere ’em
And ran around reciting
His Pythagorean Theorem.
And then there came Parmenides
And Zeno of Elea,
Who said, “There’s no such thing as change”
(A rather strange idea).
Empedocles, Leucippus, and
Democritus came next.
They came to bring enlightenment.
They left the world perplexed.
The students of Protagoras
Were led across the greens
With sophomoric wisdom,
Like “Ends justify the means.”
The irony of Socrate's
Up in his ivory tower
Is that he sought the truth of life
Yet drank a deadly flower.
Now, Plato saw another world
And thought it was Ideal.
The physical does not exist,
The mental world is real.
But Aristotle tried to take
Those separate worlds and fuse ’em.
He formed the Laws of Logic
(Though he didn’t always use ’em).
And hedonistic happiness
Was hailed by Epicurus.
He meant in moderation, though,
He hastened to assure us.
And Stoics led by Zeno came
And Skeptics led by Pyrrho.
They claimed we can’t know anything.
That added up to zero.
Then Philo borrowed Plato
And applied him to religion;
Plotinus, too, and Augustine
(Who added just a smidgen).
And mysticism called itself
Superior to reason.
And anyone who disagreed
Was put to death for treason.
Throughout the Middle Ages,
There was philosophic dryness,
Till Aristotle’s work
Was rediscovered by Aquinas.
So Renaissance philosophers
Began to do their jobs:
A dearth of new ideas
From a plethora of snobs.
Around the attributes of man
They started building fences:
Like senses without reasoning
And reason without senses.
“I think, therefore I am,”
Began the thinking of Descartes.
Spinoza spun his theories
From a geometric chart.
“We learn by pure sensation,”
Offered Berkeley, Locke, and Hume.
That knowledge is conceptual
Was too much to assume.
This mind-and-body separation
Leibniz just adored;
But “pre-established harmony”
Just struck a minor chord.
Philosophy and science split.
Now which way would they go?
“Become the noble savage,”
Came the answer from Rousseau.
Which brings us to the thinker
Most subjectivist in slant.
Can people stand to hear his name?
I promise you, I. Kant.
We owe the categorical
Imperative to him,
Which simply means morality
Is nothing more than whim.
“Self-sacrifice,” commanded Kant,
And so did Mill and Bentham,
With reasons so preposterous,
I can’t believe they meant them!
Now, Hegel held a view of man
Which Hitler found poetic.
But this was only logical:
His logic was synthetic.
That certain men are supermen
Was preached by Friedrich Nietzsche.
This concept reached the Nazis, too,
Who found it ginger-peachy.
The name for altruism
Was contributed by Comte.
With altruism, Engels, Marx,
And Lenin left us swamped.
Some think it means benevolence
And looking after Gramps.
I ask you, how benevolent
Are concentration camps?
America gave Peirce and James
And Dewey an ovation,
And pragmatism turned into
Progressive education.
You’ve heard of existentialists,
Like Kierkegaard and Sartre?
Futility and loneliness
Are all that they impart.
From Heidegger to Wittgenstein
To Whitehead, Moore, and Reid,
From Buddha to the present,
No two thinkers have agreed.
But all these men are unified
In two ways, I submit:
They all were great philosophers.
They all were full of . . . !
First Things First
Philosophy is not as complex
As they’d have us think.
It’s justifying errors
That produces such a stink.
Although some bits of wisdom
Have remained as life-enhancers,
This digging in the dogma
Hasn’t turned up many answers.
But let’s not think that
Just because philosophers were boring
The subject of philosophy
Must not be worth exploring.
Man needs a frame-of-reference
And a moral code to guide him.
But how can he make head or tail
Of what has been supplied him?
I say, let’s start all over—
Keep the best but dump the worst.
Let’s start from scratch. Let’s prove each point.
Let’s just take first things first.
The most important thing to me
Is me. (That much is true.
And so, I guess, the most important
Thing to you is you.)
But then again, I’m not
The first thing ever to occur.
My mother came before me,
And her mom preceded her.
My father had a father,
And his father had a dad.
So don’t misunderstand me
When I say, we’ve all been had.
Cause and Effect
Cause and effect, cause and effect,
I’m the result of cause and effect.
One of the ways that all things connect
Is by the Law of Cause and Effect.
Cause and effect, cause and effect,
There can be no cause without an effect.
Effects without causes would be incorrect.
So says the Law of Cause and Effect.
The cause of a bird is an egg.
The cause of an egg is a bird.
(I’m not just pulling your leg
Or trying to be absurd.)
The cause of a tree is a seed.
The cause of a seed is a tree.
Something must antecede
Before a thing can be.
Cause and effect, cause and effect,
You needn’t agree, you needn’t object.
But things can be thought about in this respect.
Respect the Law of Cause and Effect.
Way Back
But if every effect has a cause,
And each cause had a previous cause,
This theory appears to have flaws
(On which we would do well to pause).
’Cause if everything must have a cause,
Then where did it all begin?
The problem involved in this law’s
The Problem of Origin.
Way back before my parents,
My uncles and my aunts,
Way back before the welfare state
And governmental grants,
Way back before the waltz was called
A scandalous new dance,
Way back before the Bible told
Of Adam’s first romance,
Way back before the Buddha
And his transcendental trance,
Way back before the caveman
Figured out he needed pants,
Way back before the animals,
Way back before the plants,
Way back before the world began,
There was . . . a great . . . expanse . . .
The Universe
The Universe, the Universe,
Of what does it consist?
The Universe is what we call
All objects that exist.
The Universe is outer space
And galaxies of stars
And little things called planets,
Such as Venus, Earth, and Mars.
The Universe is everything,
Including you and me
And subatomic particles
Impossible to see.
You cannot go outside it
Or above it or below.
The Universe is all there is.
There’s nowhere else to go.
The Universe is not a place.
All places are in it.
In fact, there isn’t anyplace
The Universe would fit.
The Universe did not begin
At any point in time.
Existence is eternal,
And the Universe is prime.
It sounds a bit confusing,
But it isn’t hard to prove,
For time is just the measurement
Of entities that move.
The Universe, the Universe,
The first and only fact,
For something must exist at all
Before a thing can act.
The Universe, the Universe
Existed all along.
Theologists may argue,
But theologists are wrong.
No consciousness created it
Or acted as its nurse.
No consciousness existed
Prior to the Universe.
The Universe, the Universe,
It cannot be reversed:
Of all the things that ever were,
The Universe was first.
The Universe, the Universe,
The fundamental cause,
The Universe, the Universe,
It is and always was.
What Is So?
“What is so?” means “What exists?”
Coherence or confusion?
Is what we call existence real
Or only any illusion?
Existence is an axiom
Upon which all else rests,
Regardless of who says so
And regardless who protests.
Existence is self-evident
(Which simply means you know it).
It’s verified ostensively
(Which simply means you show it).
It cannot be refuted.
It’s irrational to try it.
The man who doubts existence
Has to use it to deny it.
Existence is objective:
Independent of perceiver
(Independent of evader,
Independent of believer).
To be is to be something,
To be real and specific.
No thing can be and not be
(To be strictly scientific).
All Nature’s Laws are absolute.
All entities obey them.
All entities are what they are.
No wishing will gainsay them.
An entity can only act
According to its nature.
There aren’t any miracles
In Nature’s nomenclature.
Existence is Identity.
(That ought to summarize it.)
And this implies that Consciousness
Is what identifies it.
Consciousness perceives that which exists,
And nothing more.
Perceiving what exists
Is what a consciousness is for.
Awareness is an axiom.
The moron who pooh-poohs it
Must face the same dilemma:
To deny it, he must use it.
Existence, then, and Consciousness
Are true and absolute:
Of anything we say or do,
These two are at the root.
Awareness
I am, and I am aware.
I’m aware of a world out there.
I can see for myself.
I can taste, smell, hear and feel
What is real.
I’m aware of a world within,
Of a world where my thoughts begin.
I can wonder and wish
And define, decide and know
What is so.
Every thought starts from there:
I am, and I am aware.
How Do You Know?
The second fundamental question
Asks “How do you know?”
This means, “What means does man possess
For knowing what is so?”
Is Reason man’s exclusive means
Of gaining information?
Or can he know by feelings
Or by mystic revelation?
As human beings, we depend on
Knowledge to survive.
(If not your own, then someone else’s
Thoughts keep you alive.)
Emotions aren’t knowledge;
They just make you want to move.
And faith is just believing
What you don’t know how to prove.
Reason is the faculty
From which all thought commences.
It integrates material
Provided by the senses.
The senses gather data
And transmit them to the brain.
(In simplest form, sensations
Are of pleasure or of pain.)
Sensations are retained
By means of mental integration.
This stage is called perception
(More complex than mere sensation).
We share this stage with animals.
It’s virtually static,
Because this integration
Is completely automatic.
Man’s level is conceptual,
Requiring his volition.
This means that he must choose
To use awareness for cognition.
Nothing forces man to think
On every new occasion;
He makes that choice himself each time:
It’s thinking or evasion.
The choice to think or not to think
Is man’s prerogative.
This doesn’t change his nature, though:
He needs to think to live.
All thought consists of concepts
Which identify a fact.
To know what’s so, we must be sure
Our concepts are exact.
Since man is not infallible
And man is not omniscient,
He needs to find a way
To make his thinking most efficient.
Logic is the method
That gives thought the right restriction.
It puts it to a simple test:
It’s called non-contradiction.
Contradictions can’t exist
(Or life would just be terror).
To hold a contradiction
Is to know you’ve made an error.
We cannot eat and have our cake,
No matter how we pray.
It’s either/or, and facts are facts.
The Law is “A is A.”
A Is A
One day, while they were passing ’round the bottle,
Said Plato to his pupil, Aristotle:
“This world that we perceive
Is a world of make-believe.
What we see does not exist, it’s a reflection.”
But Aristotle thought a lot
And chortled, “What a lot of rot!
This twaddle needs rebuttal and rejection!
You mean that this potato is not a real potato?
For all we know, it might be a tomato?
Plato!”
A is A. It isn’t B.
It cannot be. It’s A. You see,
The nature of reality
Decrees that A is A.
A is A. It isn’t B.
I cannot make an A a B
By wishing it could be a B.
It doesn’t work that way.
Even if an A is made of B and C,
Or if an A and B combine to make a C,
An A is still an A and not a B or C,
Any more than One is Two or Two is Three. See?
A is A. It isn’t B.
If A were just the same as B,
There’d be no need to call it B,
So let it be an A!
A is A. It’s common sense.
(I shudder at the consequence
If people tuned their instruments
Believing A is B!)
A is A, and B is B.
A thing to be an entity
Must have its own identity
(To be or not to be).
Defining what is fact and what is fiction
Depends upon the Law of Contradiction:
We contradict the meaning of “identity”
When we say a thing can be and yet not be. See?
A is A, and B is B,
And speaking philosophically,
Say they’re both the same,
I’ll knock you flat!
In is in, and out is out,
And thin is thin, and stout is stout,
And truth is truth, and doubt is doubt.
In truth, there is no doubt about it:
A is A, and may I say,
It stays that way from day to day,
And that . . . is that!
What Should You Do?
The question “So, what should you do?”
Is question number three.
Philosophy’s development
Is something like a tree:
The roots are Metaphysics,
To provide a firm foundation;
The trunk, Epistemology,
Provides substantiation;
And Ethics is the branches
And the leaves in which it’s dressed.
And in this way, morality
Depends upon the rest.
(“Okay then, what about the soil?”
I hear your silent query.
The soil is what gives rise to
Any philosophic theory:)
Life’s the only thing
That has to face alternatives.
An organism dies
Unless that organism lives.
Matter sometimes changes forms,
But cannot cease to be.
It’s only Life itself that comes
Without a guarantee.
Remember, when we speak of Life,
We mean by this abstraction
A process of self-generated,
Self-sustaining action.
An organism’s nature
Will prescribe what it should do,
And living is the value
Which its actions must pursue.
All plants act on this standard,
And all animals have sensed it:
The good is that which furthers Life.
The evil acts against it.
Now, plants will automatically
Do only what they should,
And animals have automatic
Knowledge of what’s good.
But man possesses free will.
He can act as his destroyer.
Let’s face it, man can boo-boo
(And he often needs a lawyer)!
Morality does not apply to
Everything that is;
It rests on man’s volition,
Since the choice to think is his.
Of all the values man can choose,
These three must reign supreme:
One is Reason, one is Purpose,
One is Self-esteem.
Reason is the tool with which
You strive to reach your goal.
And Purpose is the goal itself.
It plays the central role.
And Self-esteem supplies the why:
Your self-respect unswerving.
It’s your profound conviction
That your life is worth preserving.
These values have to be achieved,
And virtue’s how to do it.
The list of seven virtues
Takes one minute to go through it:
The first is Rationality,
To guide him on his course.
Man lives by means of logic,
Not by whim or faith or force.
Independence means that truth
Is yours alone to find.
It’s your responsibility
To live by your own mind.
Integrity means thought plus action
Minus any breach;
To act on your convictions
And to practice what you preach.
Honesty means only what is so
Is worth believing.
It means no values may be gained
By faking or deceiving.
Justice means you neither seek
Nor grant unearned rewards.
It means men must be traders,
And no longer serfs and lords.
Productiveness is what you do
To maintain your existence.
Achievement is your purpose,
And achievement takes persistence.
And Pride is your devotion
To yourself, your moral worth.
You have to earn the right to be
Your favorite thing on earth.
The most important thing to me
Is me, if all that’s true.
If that’s what’s so and how we know,
Then that’s what we should do.
I Took It from There
I know how to walk,
To walk down the street.
Someone once showed me
How to stand on my feet,
And then I took it from there.
I wanted to walk everywhere.
I put my left foot out
In front of my right,
And then I practiced and practiced,
Day and night.
And now I know
That I can get where I want to go.
I know how to talk.
At first it was blurred.
Someone once showed me
How to say the first word,
And then I took it from there.
I wanted to show I was aware.
I found the words for what
I wanted to say.
And then I practiced and practiced,
Night and day.
Now I can speak.
In fact, they say I talk a blue streak.
A school can only offer the tool.
A tool is of no use to a fool.
A fool can memorize every rule,
But then, as a rule, he’s through with it.
What matters is what you do with it.
Now I know how to live.
I know what to be.
Someone once showed me
It was all up to me,
And then I took it from there.
I wanted to be something rare.
I took ingredients
I liked from the shelf,
And then I mixed them together
And created myself.
And now it’s clear
That I’m the one to take it from here.
Everyone Has a Philosophy (Reprise)
Everyone has a philosophy.
Few of them make any sense.
Politics stems from philosophy.
Here’s where the heat is intense.
Communists clearly communicate:
Everyone’s wealth is to share.
Socialist, Fascist or Welfare State,
None of them plays laissez-faire.
Life requires freedom and property.
Men must not be parasites.
Men need a government, properly,
Only for guarding these rights.
Both wings are singing their songs to me:
Our lives belong to the state.
Reason says my life belongs to me;
So does the wealth I create.
Look into other philosophies.
Learn how our culture declined.
Notice how other philosophies
Ask you to give up your mind.
Specious and vicious dichotomies
Split mind and body apart;
Do-it-yourself-kit lobotomies,
Pitting the mind versus heart.
“Feelings must rule,” is the hack advice.
(No need to question their source.)
Reason, we’re told, we must sacrifice.
“Don’t think, just follow The Force!”
Some people stick to the platitudes,
Sorting the rights from the wrongs.
Some philosophical attitudes
Come from our popular songs:
Love thy neighbor.
Be wise, be smart.
Make someone happy.
Put a little love in your heart.
I’m always chasing rainbows.
The best things in life are free.
I got the sun in the mornin’
and the moon at night.
C‘est la vie! Let it be.
I got plenty of nothin’,
And it all belongs to you.
Everything I have is yours.
What now my love? What’ll I do?
Is that all there is?
What kind of fool am I?
How deep is the ocean?
How high is the sky?
That’s life,
That’s what people say.
We are poor little sheep
Who have lost our way.
But I’m glad to be unhappy.
I’ve got a right to sing the blues.
We’re lost out here in the stars.
Why was I born? Born to lose.
Did I ever really live?
What’s it all about?
The answers, my friend,
are blowin’ in the wind.
Nobody knows ya
when you’re down and out.
When you’re down and out,
lift up your head and shout:
There’s gonna be a great day.
So wrap your troubles in dreams,
And dream your troubles away.
Forget your troubles, come on, get happy,
When everything goes wrong.
You gotta accentuate the positive,
And start off each day with a song.
I believe in music.
Smile, darn ya, smile! Be a clown!
Everything is beautiful,
But don’t let it get ya down.
Smile, though your heart is aching,
And the sun comes shining through.
Put on a happy face.
Everything’s coming up roses
for me and for you.
I wanna live till I die.
I’ve got a lot of livin’ to do.
When you wish upon a star,
Your dreams come true.
No man is an island.
How little we know.
But I know why I believe.
How do I know? The Bible tells me so.
Climb every mountain,
Ford every stream.
Look for the silver lining,
And dream the impossible dream.
This is my life. I did it my way.
I’ve gotta be me. I’ll face the unknown.
Make your own kind of music,
And you’ll never walk alone.
Three Answers
So, what have we determined
In the last analysis?
We started with three questions.
The three answers go like this:
Reality is what is so.
And Reason knows reality.
And so, what we should do
Is choose a Rational Morality.
Any other course will only
Lead us to destruction.
And that is my philosophy—
At least, an introduction.
It all may sound too simple:
Apple pie and motherhooding.
That apple pie’s the entree,
But the proof is in the pudding.
Living
Living
Is loving to live,
Loving
The life that you live.
Living
Is more than a plan to survive.
The man who is living
Is more than alive.
Looking
At who you can be,
Liking
The person you see,
Knowing
The person that’s living inside;
No living without it,
The feeling of pride.
The life you love
Belongs to you.
Look to find this love behind
Everything you do.
Waking
To welcome the day,
Making
Your mind up your way,
Taking
Your share of what life has to give;
I’m learning that living
Is loving to live.
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