One of the requirements in writing about human advancement is the need to combine philosophy with contemporary social problem examples, and then provide corrective actions, or prescriptions, consistent with that philosophy. While real life examples are useful for making a point, books on the formal science of philosophy generally do not tell the readers how to live in detail. They focus primarily on the demonstration of thought validity and consistency within the philosophical framework, and use contemporary examples only when necessary. Destiny clearly contains many elements of my understanding of life, and thus my views of metaphysics and epistemology, my ethics, logic, politics and aesthetics, but it is not confined to the subject of philosophy.

The formal subject of philosophy is concerned with how we can know anything. The need for philosophy is evident when we find that ancients in Greece as well as China, India, the Middle East, Egypt and Europe, well before and long after the Dark Ages, struggled to develop consistent and sensible explanations regarding what we can know and how we can know it. 20th century philosophers have added some refinements to the formal field of philosophy, making philosophy better reflect our life experiences, but the philosophers who preceded them already expressed the basic problems in gaining knowledge and understanding reality. Many of our recent philosophers have abandoned the pure search for knowledge and have regressed in their observations to little but social commentary.

We have, it seems, hit a brick wall in our purely philosophical thought processes. Formal philosophers today mostly spend their time rehashing the work of earlier philosophers and arguing minutiae with each other over the implications of modern discoveries and inventions, e.g., computer software vs. conscious thought. The human animal appears to be unequipped to answer the challenges that overwhelmed the earlier philosophers, who used conjecture and logic in the absence of scientific knowledge to explain us in relation to the cosmos and ourselves. Virtually every famous philosopher in history committed the most fundamental human judgment error; assuming they could logic their way to positions of reasonableness, truth and timeless relevance in all aspects of philosophy.

Classical philosophy, however, no longer leads our understanding of ourselves. The other sciences have advanced our understanding of our physical environment and ourselves vastly. Today it is apparent that conjecture from early philosophers regarding our limits, our possibilities and the nature of reality is more a product of their time in history and less a matter of inherent, unconquerable human limitations. We are progressing in our development with or without the teachings of classical philosophers. Now we are beyond total ignorance about our physical world and unwilling to allow conjecture and mental constructs alone to satisfy our curiosity about what we do not know.

What we find in many books today outside the formal field of philosophy is the combination of armchair philosophy and prescriptions for improving human life. The term "armchair philosophy," which is sometimes used in a derogatory manner by academics, can describe valid reasons, methods and actions for improving our lives, or it may be rehashed drivel. It depends on the wisdom of the source. Writers like M. Scott Peck and the late Leo Buscaglia have provided a blend of humanism and theism combined with current societal concerns and packaged to help ordinary people live effectively within the confines of their general knowledge. They are representative of the class of armchair philosophers who are respectable for their intent and their talent in helping us understand how to get along with each other.

Beyond armchair philosophy, there is one example of an attempt to develop a useful, formal philosophy in the 20th century. Ayn Rand's Objectivism is a combination of a unique, experientially grounded philosophy, and in action, a commitment to personal responsibility and applied capitalism. She railed against communism and socialism through her novels, e.g., Atlas Shrugged, and in so doing spent the bulk of her literary effort exposing the weaknesses of her chosen enemy of society. Much of what she had to say in her novels was explanation for what we should not do vs. a prescription for what we must do. Her literary approach was understandable in the context of her early life experiences within the Soviet Union.

Rand had the intelligence to develop a logical, progressive, experiential philosophy and the talent and good sense to reach a large number of people through her novels. Rand was a high quality representative of 20th century efforts to apply philosophy to human development, in that she gutted the drivel from many past philosophers and ideologists and replaced it with a sensible epistemology and a rational assessment of human capabilities, rights and responsibilities.

We thus have a form of contribution from Rand that, for lack of a better term, must be called "applied philosophy for human development," not armchair philosophy and not simply the formal science of philosophy. It is in the actionable province and not confined to abstract contemplation. It is the study of how Humanity can best gain and apply knowledge, in contrast to classical philosophy, which is the science of how any human can obtain knowledge under narrowly defined conditions of reality.

Rand should be credited for her fundamental contributions to cause us to think realistically and to be aware of our less enlightened individual and societal practices. However, like many of her predecessors, she stopped short of developing a complete cosmic theory as a guide for our development of the future. Rand did not address fundamental change in the human animal, for her time in history did not allow for sensible projection of that area of growth. Accordingly, the current realities at the time Rand developed the fundamental concepts of Objectivism caused her to stop short of defining our potential future and especially the means to achieve it. Destiny takes over where Rand and other earlier advanced thinkers stopped.

Virtually all classical philosophers, except for a few humanists, developed their arguments on the incorrect basis of our perceived static potential. Their philosophies tended to be force fit to the politics/religion and other limits of their time, e.g., Descartes, Kant, and Aquinas. They had the added limitation of being developed at a time in our history when our understanding of the cosmos, from binary stars to viruses, was inferior to the present. And there is an obvious implication that our understanding of reality is affected by new knowledge, so it is sensible to predict further changes in the future in our understanding of ourselves, especially in regard to what we can know. Destiny strongly promotes growth in our acquisition and application of knowledge.

Destiny has the characteristic of prescriptive recommendations, which appears necessary to involve people alive today in areas other than academia. What distinguishes Destiny from other 20th century philosophical efforts, and those from ancient Greece and China and western Europe up to the 20th century, is the total revamping of our concept of ourselves in the cosmos. As such, it stands far apart from other 20th century and earlier works.

Destiny prescriptions are necessarily limited in scope and detail, as no writer today, to my knowledge, has the bandwidth to know and respond intelligently to all life situations, or the time to do so. Destiny does not identify a singular, active enemy of human society. It focuses on human behavior and our best attempts to deal with our physical, metaphysical and epistemological ignorance, and then it explains explicitly how we can grow beyond our present limitations.

Destiny is both a philosophy and an ideology. An ideology can be a political philosophy directed towards human advancement. Webster defines an ideology as the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program. Both definitions certainly apply to Destiny. Destiny is a plan for changing the world order and the lives of all people.

The book, Destiny, was designed as a primer. That means the topic coverage and depth were intentionally limited to provide a summary of propositions and supporting arguments and examples that are relatively easy to understand. It also means that those same propositions and supporting arguments will be expanded in subsequent efforts to realize closure and completeness in topical coverage. I have, as it were, focused on the larger aspects of our experiences and our future success.

Destiny prescriptions are most definitely a call for action to proceed with our evolution in what I believe to be the most humanitarian approach to our future. My hope is that other minds, having absorbed the concepts in Destiny, will build upon the concepts and help refine them, for I do not have the experiential breadth or depth to know all of the important aspects of advancing the human race. Thus, a key Destiny prescription is the use of cooperation between the developers of new knowledge and applied science to advance the cause of human development.

For now, understand that actions of lasting, broadly applied, beneficial social consequence cannot happen without the active participation of many people, working in concert towards desirable, well-defined and achievable goals. And people did, do and will succeed in improving human life, but only to the extent that we grow individual human capability to leverage and advance our collective knowledge. It is now time for us to change the rules that have defined human limitations. Prepare yourself to break the chain.