Finding those that you are freely willing to cooperate with can be a chore, however!

Science began long ago....millennia, possibly epochal, I'll assert. Toolmaking is the first science of humans. The first repeated use of something other than Self to facilitate comfort for ease of living. Science has eliminated many challenges to humans and the host of species we have domesticated. We have distanced from the immediacy of survival.

Science has provided leisure. Leisure allowed for speculation on What we are and How we interact. And the Science of Mind appears to have made It's toehold, 2600 to 2400 years ago, with Laotzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius and Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, respectively. Humans began to explore the How and Why of Existence.

As a human I exist with a sense of past, present, future tense and can convey this through the tool of word-symbols....quite unique as species go. I can perceive and conceptualize in abstracts....a glorious and often debilitating condition. Debilitating? I can assume.

Assumption is the bane of the human condition of Mind. As tribes of humans flourished and grew in size, the first-hand knowledge of Who did What, changed context from (me and you) to (me and they, them, those), to (us and them). We assumed, a second-hand, third-hand approach to expectations that the science/tool would be available for our respective comfort. We created institutions (an abstract tool) to protect us from the removal of our science/tool/comfort to which we are Entitled. We assumed our Institutions, founded on the ambiguity of word-symbol-tools, would Perform for each of our individual perceptive/conceptualized awarenesses. If I am not aware how can I conceptualize? If I assume and conditions outside my assumptions impinge to a great degree how may I react?

Snowflake. I abhor the term though I see it as apt metaphor for the emotional/mental conditions I witness around me on a daily basis. "Snowflakes" melt or crumble in uncertain condition or conflict. I see confusion, fear, fight, flight symptoms throughout all the medium of interaction I explore. I have found no one unaffected. Probability of those unaffected I'll relegate to categories of severe mental disability, young children, remote tribal cultures....I'm sure the list can be conditionally expanded.

Reason, yes, the only process to sanity. Walter Donway clarified the path of word-symbo-thought for me by expressing all learning is hierarchical, an essay I've re-read many times. Rand holds the second place in my emotional/mental/reasoning development, compared to Laotzu as my first and longest source. I can name many other sources, all random, through a life of self-induced/directed exploration. I learned to reason without the formality of schooling. The first questioning of mine, regarding humans, was of "Why are we the only species that "violates" natural order, or law"? This was from my mid-teens, for context sake, and has been sustained for more than 40 years. Why do we behave in the manner spectrum of proto-simian to the highly philosophical?, is the more contemporary expression.

My dad proposed a question in 1994. What do you get when you boil life down to it's simplest form? Relationships and choices.
No living organism can avoid that answer. Life must be proactive in It's survival. Life must seek and process some form of energy. Life must procreate. The purpose of Life is continuity. I experience my life, along with all other Life, in forms of comfort and discomfort. I experience my life, along with many other forms of Life, in aspects of happiness and unhappiness. I experience my life with humans and a few other life forms in the context of equity and inequity, a mutually agreed upon exchange of time/energy interaction. This is what I learned to understand from Rand's, The Objectivist Ethics. No human has to believe the above, yet none of us can avoid. These are the metaphysical absolutes of human development and interaction. I've begun teaching the very young, as they come my way, in this hierarchy of awareness. If this is not simple enough that a youngster,or the Lay, can begin conceptualization toward equity and inequity, I see a lesser/diminished/time-delayed value expression in the respective relationships of a future.

Values. Definitions. Hierarchy. Hierarchical application. Reason.

The cyclical mechanism. At any stage one may cycle to any of the previous based upon relationships and choices.
Awareness
Involvement
Commitment
Evaluation
Insight
Wisdom
Purpose

The underpinning requirement to involve in any of the aforementioned: I care.
I offer the above as admonishment and entreatment as you proceed in your endeavor.