I agree with the passage when it states that, “Ultimately, of course, nobody can ever be objective,” (Lewis, 17). I appreciate that this was the start to this paragraph of the text because the last sentence of the preceding paragraph, which states, “Ideally we should have a new academic specialty, one devoted solely to an overall account of values, but such a specialty does not yet exist,” (Lewis, 17) seemed to be wishful thinking on the part of the author. I believe, and have learned in many social science classes, that we are influenced by both our genetic makeup, as well as our everyday human experiences, and that these two factors make it incredibly hard for any person to be completely objective. The author stated that someone without professional credentials might be able to come up with an “objective account of the entire spectrum of personal evaluations, beliefs, and systems” (Lewis, 17) just as well as anyone else. This is true, but not because they would lack the expertise that biases many credentialed professionals, instead, because they have the expertise of personal life experiences that set them up to be just as biased as any other person. As stated by the author, “he has personal evaluations and beliefs of his own, and these will inevitably color what he writes. Not only is the very desire to be objective a ‘value judgment’ of bias, so is the desire to define, categorize, compare, and contrast the different ways that we choose values,” (Lewis, 17). A layperson could not help but influence their account of the spectrum of values because of their own life experiences.

I did not find anything in the reading that I strongly disagreed with, however, I did not fully understand the author’s use of the quote from Walter Lippmann’s A Preface to Morals about “the unfortunate” suffering chronic anxiety. The preceding sentences stated, “Many people seem not only barraged by an informational overload of conflicting and ill-defined value systems; they also seem increasingly unsure about how to respond. The fortunate among us have strong values, however difficult it may be to articulate or defend those values. The unfortunate suffer chronic anxiety,” (Lewis, 18). I was curious as to whether he meant that the unfortunate lack values, and therefore suffer from anxiety; or whether they have many values, but do not have a strong reason to support and defend these values against conflicting value systems. I would agree that when a person lacks values completely, it would make life unbearably confusing. It would be very hard to find peace and pleasure with everyday activities. However, if it is taken to mean that the unfortunate have values, but do not have strong reasons to support them, it would seem that the person could find reasons pertaining to their life to support the values that they obtained, or if they cannot find satisfying reasons, they could change their values in support of other reasoning; either way, avoiding a life of chronic anxiety.