While life-long optimal sexual experience is the primary genetically encoded value in life, and while a gentle death is the philosophically most sensible target, two second-tier values in a non-religious human existence warrant special attention: freedom and safety.
Of course, one can argue that both freedom and safety are instrumental sub-categories of optimal sexual experience (being prerequisites of the latter). Nevertheless, there is enough individual character in both to justify treating them as entities in their own right.
Among the aspects that make freedom and safety values that are to be pursued independently, is their social character. While our freedom, theoretically, may be impaired by agents other than other humans (or forces of nature), for practical reasons, we think of freedom as a social category. We are free, when we are not subdued by other humans, or by some institutions of human society.
The social character of safety lies in the fact that it is the one category that justifies the curtailment of freedom.
The concepts of freedom and its counter-aspect of safety are the important link between a nihilistic philosophy and political activism.
As a nihilist, I do not believe in values that lie beyond my individual death. As a nihilist with a biological understanding of the world, I am aware that I just live to pursue an optimal sexual experience, and to end life in a gentle death.
However, the second tier values of freedom and safety are equally important to me as they are for an idealist who dedicates his life to fight for a better world for future generations. This is the case because for a nihilist who pursues optimal sexual experience, too, freedom and safety are social characteristics that greatly facilitate the realization of his agenda.
Yes, my sexual philosophy is highly elitist. Yes, in practice, I pursue the best sex for me, which, arithmetically and automatically, leaves other men with worse sex than I enjoy.
I couldn't be an activist with an agenda to implement for all men the same quality of sex which I enjoy. If I want for me hundreds of genuine love relationships with young women who are beautiful above average and reserve a certain degree of exclusiveness for me, then this means that other men will have to do with much less frequent love relationships, and with relationships with women who are beyond their prime.
But even though I am an elitist in my sexual exploits, I can still be a freedom fighter.
Individual freedom is such a lure that even those are fascinated by it who have a hard time to compete for the best females. Every person is fascinated by the concept of personal freedom because it nourishes hopes and always leaves a window of opportunity. And who knows: maybe one will be catapulted into being an alpha male through a lottery win, or other events of sheer luck.
"Freedom for all" is an easy sell because it is a convincing idea. We all want a society that is as free as ever possible, with the only exception that we want freedom curtailed to the extend necessary to allow us to live in reasonable safety.
To provide this level of safety, is the function of states (the term is used in its international meaning of a government and its administrative layers down to community level, not in its US meaning as a unit of the United States). Thus states are definitely needed, and the anarchistic idea of dismantling states is illusionist.
Even though states are needed, this doesn't that a state would have to interfere with personal freedom to a degree as does the US federal government. That it does is an indication of a weak, not a strong state, and a direct consequence, strange as this may sound, of democracy.
A strong state, based on a strong ideology (or constitution) of granting and preserving individual freedom would be the best guarantor of individual freedom.
