FJ: “You must take a stand against discontinuity. Where there is selfishness, inseparability cannot thrive. Pain is born in the gap where choice has been excluded.”
If individuation/togetherness/differentiation is not a choice, separability/inseparability loses meaning. Inseparability [necessary, (super)natural] is not a choice (contingent/supernatural), so is not consensual togetherness. It is better to talk about wholes than ones/singularities in that context, or to view ones/singularities as wholes. And there is a wholeness that is chosen. We choose the essential when we create toward the eternal.
Selfishness as Ayn Rand defined it does not conflict with Golden Rule (self=other) selflessness (she was mistaken that altruism is selfishness… and that non-brutish selfishness is selfishness…), because she rejected the selfishness of the brute, and acknowledged that interest moderated by reason is not brutish (in disregard of the other). She didn’t realize she was arguing for that which she strawmanned.
To exclude choice is a choice. Excluding/choosing comes with pain, sure. You want both, but both cannot be chosen—otherwise, choice is a non-issue, or you’d only want one. You can’t want unless you can also not get what you want. In other words, you can’t even want one unless you have options. Opt for wholeness. The all loses meaning without many which bare minimum reflect it. Like a rainbow distributing light.
If that makes sense.