 good morning ladies and gentlemen good afternoon ladies and gentlemen good evening ladies and gentlemen good morning see I did not say the rest of it good morning good afternoon good evening okay I'm gonna just start by saying hi there this is Leonard peak off that's how I start my radio show it's shorter than saying all the possible time zones good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome to Ocon 21 I understand that you're working on OPA this convention this conference at least as one of your main things and I appreciate that thank you and I wish you the best so don't you wish he was coming up on stage right now that would be cool I certainly do all right it's it's great to see everybody it's great to be here it's it's amazing how many of you I know only in two dimensions and it's been a real thrill to learn that there's a third dimension to you as well I'm done I've had I was zoom I'm sure I'll be doing lots of more zooms but this is so much more fun this is so much better so thanks you know holding a philosophy living by a philosophy integrating a philosophy into your life it's hard it's hard under any circumstances it would be hard in Atlantis it's work it requires effort and focus but we live in a world that's not Atlantis unfortunately we live in a world in which we're continuously bombarded with the opposite ideas with challenges to ideas whether it comes from the news and what's happening around the world or whether it comes from our family our friends our colleagues our bosses there's a constant challenge to everything we believe and holding that philosophy it's difficult it takes a lot of energy it takes a lot of effort and it takes reminding ourselves of the value of the philosophy and what it actually contains the content of the philosophy it needs to be kept alive constantly really all the time it's so easy to drift away from it as many people have over the decades it's only so easy to succumb to the pressure from the outside and to give up on it you know when I read Atlas shrugged for the first time I was 16 years old and it blew my mind I've told you I've told this story many times I mean he changed everything it turned my world upside down and I discovered a new philosophy for living but I discovered it at a certain level so in ideas as I understood them at 16 from Atlas shrugged and it set me on a path to study and to figure out and to investigate and to try to integrate these ideas into my life and to understand them to get to know them to figure out what they actually were because Atlas shrugged leaves you with a lot of questions leaves you with a lot of answers but also with a lot of questions and you know I you know I'm a little older than many of you here although there's some people who are a little older than me I mean in those days I read it in Israel and it was impossible to find other iron-rend books and we you know we a book here and a book there and reading the non fiction and reading the fountainhead immediately afterwards and for three years I thought I was the only person on planet Earth who took these ideas seriously I mean except for the guy who gave me Atlas shrugged he was the only person I knew who took these ideas semi for him it was more semi seriously and we'd have conversations but it was me studying and and trying to figure this out and the temptation to move away the emotions you know as I'm struggling with collectivism and altruism and everything else was strong and finally met some of the objectivists in the early 1980s and we used to get together and and and try to study their ideas and discuss them and debate them and so on but they were all at my level pretty much and some of them might have known a little bit more a little bit less but we were struggling to understand the ideas and you read Iron Rand and you read an essay here and an essay there and yes I mean it's life changing and it's it's deep and it's important but it's hard it's it's not it's not easy particularly again when you when you're raised on a different philosophy where everything around you is a different philosophy and I remember coming to my first Ocon it was called the Thomas Jefferson School back then on my way to Austin Texas actually went to school a block and a half from here at the business school not far from here for six years and on the way went to San Diego it's kind of on the way from Israel and spent two weeks there and Dr. Peacoff this is the first time I'd really heard Dr. Peacoff right you know there were there were tapes and there were courses but we didn't have access to them and I certainly couldn't afford them at the time that you had to rent them and all kinds of rules and there was no way I could do that but actually seeing Dr. Peacoff live he did he did a lecture course on Objectivism the state of the art and it wow I mean it was just a different level it was just a different different experience Steve Steve was there that's right it was just a different experience from from what I'd experienced with my friends in Israel discussing these ideas suddenly you got a sense there was a real sense of a philosophy and and a real sense of an integration and scope right and it's still these were the lectures where he had a few highlights it wasn't it wasn't the whole system and you know it was it was it was it was quite an experience to suddenly be for two weeks like you guys at Ocon right with people who knew a lot more than I did people who could actually we could have a conversation that I could learn from about Objectivism many of the speakers or some of the speakers who are here well they're in in at TGS that was 1987 I then moved to Austin and we continue to discuss and debate but it was always there's always something missing it was work it was it was difficult to integrate it all to hold it all as a unit and then OPA was published in 1991 now what does OPA achieve OPA the philosophy Objectivism the philosophy of Iron Rand just so we're clear right what does OPA achieve it achieves this unit economy it gives you one book and the philosophy is there from beginning to end it is well developed concretized made real for all of us it's accessible we can all read it understand and start seeing how the whole system is one integrated whole now Iron Rand is the genius who discovered the philosophy who articulated it who explained it who taught it to the circle of people around her she is the one in a millennium genius but she needed a student somebody to take her ideas and teach us those ideas she was not gonna write the philosophy in a book the systematic presentation of philosophy she didn't do it she never wrote that definitive book articulating the ideas and yet we need that definitive book we need that unity we need that whole let me pick up in 30 years with Iron Rand writes only ideas organized into a logical structure can be tied to reality and lonely such ideas therefore can be of use or value to man all these ideas organized logically tied to reality so that we can use them so that we can live by them well this is what Leonard and I once in a while I'll slip and call him Leonard dr. Peacock took on himself to understand objectivism thoroughly and to communicate objectivism to all of us and we're here today to celebrate that achievement as represented in opal and I think represented in all the courses that built up to opal and built farm opal onwards so what did Leonard have to do to achieve this massive integration and this amazing organization of the content well first draw on all of Iron Rand's writings from the novels to the nonfiction to some of the nonfiction that's never been published in book form in the objectivist and in newsletter and so on and bring that all together draw out of it the philosophical principles and organize them and structure them and put them into the right hierarchy but not everything that Iron Rand thought not everything that she even taught with regard to objectivism with regard to the philosophy is in those articles and in those books may be implicit but not explicit she also gave seminars to groups to the group of friends that were with her she often spoke and had discussions and debates and that had to be recalled and brought in and then finally and you think this is you know one of Leonard's dr. Peacock's great achievements is it from early on from really his first meeting with Iron Rand Leonard started asking questions and never stopped from everything that everybody tells me and from his stories he would ask a question he would get Iron Rand's explanation then there were things he wouldn't understand she would go back and ask more questions and he would write it down he would write all this down and by doing that he in a sense forced Iron Rand to think about what was to her obvious that she could just see that it was just there and for everybody else it wasn't but he was the one who asked the questions that integrity that honesty that's involved in knowing what you don't know in knowing where your own gaps of knowledge are is one of Leonard's great virtues and is reflected in opa because it's from those conversations from that prodding that I think some of what I ran actually wrote in the nonfiction came but that's where Leonard drew in order to complete opa to fill in the gaps he drew from those conversations of course in 1976 he gave a series of lectures on the philosophy of Objectivism kind of tying the whole thing in the precursor to opa and Iron Rand was there she was in the audience but she was also backstage in a sense helping answering questions she appeared many times in the Q&As and she declared that course the only the only really systematic presentation of her philosophy so Leonard took all that information and in 1984 he sat down and decided okay I'm gonna do something pretty simple right I'm gonna transcribe by 1976 talks my lectures Iron Rand was there it's authoritative it's finalized and I'm just gonna transcribe them I'll do a little bit of editing and we'll publish it it doesn't work that way it turns out that as he was as these were transcribed as he was starting to edit he discovered there were better ways to formulate better ways to structure more consistent ways to integrate more consistent ways to validate and what turned into a simple maybe a year or two project slowly got expanded and expanded and turned into a seven year project and you can tell when you read the book you can tell the precision in which he writes the effort that went into it the dedication that goes into it the clarity of writing the beauty of the writing this is not a transcript of a talk anybody who's ever given a talk and it gets a transcript afterwards it's embarrassing right you want to immediately go back and edit it you can't do that but so he spent those years organizing prioritizing finding the language every word mattered every word counted and of course validating everything proving it to us the reader and this is of course Leonard's unique genius a his prodding of iron rand getting the content and then having the ability the brilliance to sit down and organize it and structure and delivered in a way that we all can understand that we all can learn from that we all cannot hold objectivism as a unit we have a book that represents what objectivism carries so the way of our structure is hierarchically we get the hierarchy of objectives are from metaphysics to epistemology to ethics politics and of course aesthetics and within each one of those branches the presentation is hierarchical it's a logic to it for example in epistemology we start with the senses the validity of the senses the theory of concept formation the concept of objectivity and of course leading up to reason if we look at the ethics we start with the nature of man and then we go to the good virtue and the payoff the moral purpose of life happiness so the book is structured based on the hierarchy but at no point to any of these concepts kind of floating abstractions I've seen I've seen objectivists maybe it's been a long time since I've seen one of these present these try to do these graphs and charts and and arrows and all these concepts as and they're completely floating not attached to anything but at every point in the book Dr. Pika brings in relevant facts the concreets to prove and to validate the particular point we always have a reference to reality we're never left with an abstraction are tied to everything else and of course we know that to validate we must reduce the reality Leonard Ein man teaches us that and introduction to objectives of cosmology and Leonard reinforces that in opa we need to reduce to reality but then we need to integrate with the rest of our knowledge and opa the ideas are constantly being integrated every new point is integrated with all the previous points so for example take the chapter in capitalism towards the end of opa I mean capitalism obvious sometimes often is presented as a standalone kind of unit you know we talk about the politics economics and kind of standalone but not an opa it rests completely on a theory of government on a mall on a morality of egoism on an objective epistemology and on a primacy of existence indeed capitalism is a system of a privacy of existence and privacy of existence leads inevitably to capitalism and that's what Leonard shows us in opa if you think about the subtitles under capitalism capitalism is the only moral social system capitalism is a system of objectivity a position to capitalism as dependent on what would you say altruism bad economics but you know Keynes what is it in opa as a bad epistemology a position to capitalism as dependent on a bad epistemology now it's enough to read those subtitles of the chapter in capitalism to know that we are not libertarians they wouldn't even understand what we're talking about and the chapter on moral social system Leonard not only shows the dependence of the ideas of capitalism freedom on a particular view of morality but then he shows our capitalism the system of freedom reinforces all those moral value more values and virtues then indeed to practice the virtues fully one must be free more must live under capitalism and he goes through every single one of the virtues and shows what it means to be independent under freedom versus to struggle to be independent when forces exerted upon you by the mixed economy or the statists and he does this for every single one of the virtues capitalism is a system of objectivity covers the objectivity of values and why capitalism is consistent with Rand's theory of concept formation why it's consistent with the idea of objectivity indeed everything in opa is integrated around the core of iron rand's philosophy which is her epistemology everything is there to show how a theory of concepts gives rise to this entire philosophy and let it has a whole chapter on objectivity after all this is the philosophy of objectivism and yet Rand didn't write much about objectivity there's not much in the corpus on objectivity so a lot of the material in this chapter is new it's what Leonard got from iron rand directly and think about the subheading I mean I love this subheading it's probably my favorite in the entire book in the in the chapter on objectivity this is the objectivity what is objectivity right objectivity as volitional adherence to reality by the method of logic objectivity as volitional adherence to reality by the method of logic think about how much is compressed into that sentence we've got volition free will is essential to objectivity and therefore essential to everything about our philosophy volition is at the core of the heart of everything then nothing is meaningful without it but it's not any anything it's not whim in a sense it's volition as adherence to reality you've got what what axiom you've got the primacy of existence reality is what we must adhere to and by what method well by the method of reason by the method of logic the unique cognitive tool that human beings have so in one sentence in not even a sentence a subheading he conveys so much and so much integration so much of the heart of the philosophy the metaphysics and epistemology on which everything else is built is conveyed just then of course then there's a whole chapter that articulates the case that explains it that concretizes it that integrates it so this new understanding of objectivity which is new to iron rent it's presented to us in opa I think really for the first time as a whole as a unit something I think we can all start to understand she shows that this new concept informs her entire philosophy and if you look at the subchapters that come afterwards if you look at how he ties this back so here I'm just gonna read you some of the subchapters from later chapters notice the reference to epistemology and metaphysics right values as objective independence as a primary orientation to reality honesty is the rejection of unreality primacy of existence sex is metaphysical statism is the politics of unreason capitalism is a system of objectivity opposition to capitalism is dependent bad epistemology we've covered these art is the concretization of metaphysics and aesthetics aesthetic value as objective and here we see how unique objectivism is it is a system it's a system that is integrated a one a whole it's not libertarianism it's not virtue ethics it's not any specific thing it's one whole take out any one unit and it falls apart it is an integrated philosophical system unique in the history of ideas even the polemics that Leonard presents he presents in a very essentialized way the book is not a polemical book it's presenting a positive theory but he shows that almost all the bad ideas that have that haunt all of us in the modern world come from again epistemology from the intrinsic subjective for either being intrinsic or being subjective these are the heart of all these errors and if you want to understand the root of evil in the world you have to look at these ideas he uses the polemics throughout and in every chapter there's a section of polemics towards then to contrast objectivism to highlight what objectivism is adding the value that it provides to our life and how and in what way it's opposed to almost everything else that's out there on the ideological spectrum so the polemic serve to highlight the philosophical achievement of objectivism and to increase our understanding through contrast think of the chapter on virtues it's 75 pages long that doesn't include the section on rationality which is in the previous chapter so it's 75 pages basically dedicated to six virtues plus the evil of the initiation of force in gold speech the virtues are discussed in two and a half pages when it takes these virtues and choose them for us breaks them down concretizes them integrates them shows their relevance to your life and shows why you must hold them on principle when it rates oh Paul we have 75 pages but that then becomes a basis for say dr. Smith's book a whole book on the virtues now take the virtue of integrity for example in gold speech it's one paragraph I was going to read you the paragraph but I encourage you to read it yourself it's an amazing paragraph on the virtue of integrity but it is incredibly abstract it's hard I mean I had a read it now two or three times to really grasp what she's getting it when it takes that paragraph turns it into seven pages where he explores exactly what integrity is he explains it he concretizes it he boils it down to its essentials one of my favorite kind of condensations that he has in all of opa is when he says then integrity I just think about I mean just think about this plan words and and his ability with the English language integrity is the principle of being principled well think about that that's exactly what integrity is he contrasts the idea with moral compromise in this in these seven pages he discusses the nature of evil and then he concludes by showing us that intrinsicism and subjectivism are incompatible with integrity they necessitate compromise that that's the whole point that the virtue of integrity is an impossibility if one accepts these epistemological views again everything is tied to the epistemology now I was going to read you a section because I was reading the section on integrity and if somebody wants I'll read it in the Q&A and how one paragraph that just struck me because of what's going on right now in Afghanistan and you know I I'm always thinking about those things and there's a paragraph there about foreign policy that is so relevant to what's happening right now it's so relevant to what we're living through right now the horrors that we're living through right now but I'll leave that if somebody's really interested I'll read it to you in the Opa is filled with topics that Ein Rand talks about again these are all Ein Rand's ideas but she does not elaborate on we talked about the virtues or even the 15 pages on the initiation of physical force is evil the chapter or sub chapter on the arbitrary as neither true or false knowledge and certainty as contextual reason as man's basic means of survival not just something in your head not just something to kind of understand the world but as a guide to action reason as a guide to action why one should act on principle there's a fantastic talk Dr. Peacuff gave at Fort Huffo forum I think and there was turned into an essay on why I should act in principle everybody should read that essay it is it's truly it's important and it contributes to your life now all this is in Ein Rand it's certainly in the novels I mean I said that Ein Rand only devotes a paragraph to it in gold speech but think about it that what's the fountain hit about it's about integrity and independence but it's not it's not presented as such it's hard to hold as such when one is thinking about one's life about the philosophy as a philosophy so Leonard explains expands integrates concretizes formulates he does what a great teacher does he's teaching us and one of the amazing things about opal is how well it is written how essentialized how clear it's super exact and precise philosophically and yet it's accessible it presents a digestible unit objectivism is digestible unit unit as a philosophical system that all of us can integrate he gives us enough detail but never causing you to lose sight of where you're heading of the system as a whole of the forest you never get bogged down by the trees and lose sight of that forest it's interesting it's all concretized it's written in beautiful English it truly is a masterpiece that I think Dr. Peacock was probably the only person who could have written it there's nobody else this is 30 years ago so we're celebrating here at okon over those 30s years opal has become the textbook the way to study and learn objectivism I mean one of my goals today is to encourage you who haven't read okon okon opa too many acronyms to read it and those of you have to read it again but it's more than just reading so I got my copy when it first came out in 1991 I still have it I didn't bring it with me because it's falling apart it's one of those hardback covers that if you open it too many times starts falling apart everything's outlined every the paragraphs are numbered because I read it immediately when it came out but then I realized that you can't just read it you now have to study it so here in Austin you know about I don't know 20 minutes and I had my sense of direction is completely off here so somewhere there close to 360 in John and Gale with Rose house and I think their daughter is here Kira with Ro we started a study group and we'd get together every Sunday for a year and studied opa went over it section by section some of you there are few faces here that were there and participated in that study group later in the mid this is a 1992 in the mid 90s opa was the textbook for in my OTC education three years with Dr. Harry been swing as our teacher going over opa it took us three years because there's so much there and of course since then I've gone back to it over and over again anytime I had a question the lexicon and opa and of course re-reading I ran and everything else but opa is a place where you can quickly look or you can read again and see the integrations if you're not sure and of course at the Institute at a right opa is is the heart of the curriculum in all of our courses starting from its publication my class in the OTC in the 19 in the mid 1990s and then continuing when the OEC was a one-year program it was a one-year program about opa when OEC was a three-year program one of those years was opa when OEC was a you know it's changed four year three year two year one year but in all cases opa was at the heart of the education all the intellectuals the younger intellectuals here well in a sense raised on opa educated through opa really dug into the philosophy through opa it's the book that is I think at the end of the day created a movement when somebody says what is objectivism here it is this is objectivism if somebody wants to reckon with the philosophy critique the philosophy engage with the philosophy it's okon that they're gonna have to deal with they're gonna have to reckon with so over the last 30 years opa has had a profound impact on me personally as an intellectual no way my intellectual path would be what it was without opa my understanding was nowhere near as good pre to post and every time I've studied it my understanding has grown gotten deeper better integrated and look objectivism is a lifelong pursuit it's not something you're done with but no way would have I gotten to where I am without it and I think that is true of all the intellectuals that are here today with us it is a true historic achievement it's truly unique in the history of philosophy to have a book that presents a systematic philosophy the scope the readability I mean think about how readable it is as compared to almost any other philosopher out there I mean that's true of Iron Man and it's true of Lana Peacock you know I asked some of intellectuals what else comes close and and there's nothing else because if you look at people who've tried to do systematic presentations it's almost impossible to read it's really really hard it's certainly not something anybody can approach most of us can approach you have to be a pro I mean imagine what would have happened if Aristotle had had a student who systematically taught Aristotle after Aristotle died I asked Robert Mayhew if that was the case and no it wasn't I suspect the world would be a different world today if Aristotle has a Lena Peacock we do have a Lena Peacock we do have an Opa and we should be thankful for them in his 30 years of iron rand Leonard writes about iron rand and quote her universe was a single hole with all its parts interrelated and intelligible unquote now we can all strive to make our lives that way whole interrelated intelligible but when it comes to the philosophy of objectivism Leonard now has given us the tool to make it whole to make it intelligible to make it interrelated to make it our own to be able to use it and apply it to our own life to make the philosophy really yours so I think we all owe Dr. Peacock a thank you thank you for not giving up on asking iron rand questions on getting all that she took that she had implicitly that she took in a sense as obvious or for granted and making it explicit thank you for writing this amazing book so that we can now integrate these ideas into our lives and make this philosophy our philosophy in a much more complete and whole way than we could have without it thank you for being our teacher for teaching us this philosophy but doing it so well we can never really repay Dr. Peacock for everything he's given us in that sense but thank you Leonard now I'm gonna end with a story a quick story that Harry told me Harry been swearing said that you know shortly before I ran passed away how he said to iron to ran to Ms. Rand if only we had 10 Leonard Peacocks we would take over the world and I meant looked at him you know with a little bit of scorn and disappointment it's like what do you mean if we had two Leonard Peacocks we would take over the world well I hate to disagree with iron Rand and I almost never do it but you only have one Leonard Peacock we only have one old Paul and we will take over the world thank you all yeah I should give a standing ovation not to me but to Leonard we should have his picture okay we have time for Q&A oh wow already all right so let me just say which I should have said at the beginning I'm not a philosopher don't ask me what's man on page five you know so keep the people questions at the at the level and status that I can answer them yes I am a philosopher yes so I'll just if you don't mind offer a comment because it's difficult to really kind of concretize what it means to have a hierarchical structure I think you pointed out quite rightly all the places we're in later chapters they refer back to earlier chapters but here's an anecdote so some of the younger you know not so younger anymore philosophers and I we tried one time of the opar babies as Greg likes to call those of us those of us who started studying Objectivism once opar already existed so that it was a resource from the very beginning to us well one time we tried to play this old Objectivism parlor game called concepts in a hat and the idea of this game that people played in Rand's salon was they would take different principles different concepts of hers put them on strips of paper put them in a hat and you'd pull out to and you'd have to state how they were integrated in rhyme and in rhyme now we didn't do but we didn't do the whole thing because nobody wanted to sit there and tear up pieces of paper but somebody picked some things out of the out of the index of opar anything and we found that for us it was sort of trivial to state the connections between them in a way that you know the game was originally meant to be hard and sort of we reflected on it like why is this so easy are we just so good at philosophy probably but but in fact it was really because of opar because we we didn't have to study Objectivism from galt speech which great though it is is not kind of designed to present a philosophy so much as to state reasons for us you know a strike right we had this book that was sort of top down bottom up and and sort of had the whole system together and just to see how easy it was to see the connections really kind of showed just how powerful it was for us in learning and mastering the philosophy at a conceptual level that's a great example thank you good morning your own thank you for that so I would be curious to hear about that paragraph you referred to in the section on integrity about foreign policy and how it relates to Afghanistan well I'm not gonna have to say anything you'll get you'll see how it relates to Afghanistan as I read it now he's just talked about why you can't compromise with a burglar and he says an obvious similarity exists between this case and that of a country able to defend itself which decides nevertheless to negotiate with an aggressor agreeing to some of the ladders arbitrary demands in the name of being flexible and preserving peace such a country thereby invites more demands to be answered by more flexibility it is doomed from the start assuming it does not change its policy by conceiving the propriety of some aggression it has dropped the principle of self-defense and its own sovereignty which leaves it without moral grounds to object to the next depredation so and he says in parentheses the alternative to such capitulation is not necessarily war just absolutely true on the contrary a free nation strength moral and military is its greatest deterrent to war and if you think about you know there are no words to describe the treason the the horror of what we do what we've been doing for years what the last two administrations have done in Afghanistan to bring us to the point where you know just the other day what 13 Marines died for what all avoidable all preventable and and in the United States is now from a farm policy perspective nothing I mean it's it's it's just any strength and and that it might have projected in the past is finished it's it's a it's hard to describe how much of a disaster this is and it's it's right there in the paragraph I mean it's once you start compromising you know Biden literally sent the the the Taliban a list of the people the Afghans he wants to evacuate talk about having a kill list now of who they're gonna who they are gonna destroy I mean things like that and this is in peace we've got a peace treaty with them we'd be negotiating with them we'd be nice the CIA director met with with with one of them you know these are people who are dedicated killing Americans dedicated destroying our system of government dedicated to everything we're against and we have the military power it's not like with some weak country that has to go we have and we don't get me started we're celebrating you know your own we have your own we have an online question next where are you I can't see you back here oh there okay yeah so the question is many hesitate to fully get into and study Objectivism because it's because it's not very popular Dr. Peacock of course recognized the revolutionary nature of Fran's ideas when he first encountered it as a young man what qualities in him do you think enabled him to do that you know it's it's a real question why do some of us read Atlas shrugged or the fountainhead in Dr. Peacock's case and it just it changes our world and other people read Atlas shrugged the fountainhead and say oh yeah yeah that was good and they just go on in life and other people read it and say oh I don't like that and I and I don't know I wish I knew exactly what it was but I'd have to say that at the core of it has to be some sense of intellectual honesty some courage to declare every everything that you see around you and everything you believed in wrong or at least probably wrong so that you're investigating this new idea and some some hero worship you know a real desire to see heroes which is what I meant gives us she gives us heroes and through those heroes she teaches us of a different way to live our lives so there's it's a combination of courage honesty intellectual honesty deep deep intellectual honesty that allows you to make the question these things and that this desire you know maybe in your own life to be a hero or to see heroes in your life or maybe both so it's some some combination of those things I think is what makes us different than everybody else who reads a man who is not affected by it which has always been a mystery to it to me I mean when I read it at 16 and I'm sure you experienced this I thought okay I'll just show this to everybody else and they'll get it this is just a matter of time now right this is so obvious and it's not obviously yes if civilization were to crumble and only one book could survive would you rather it be at the shrugged or opar that's not fair no but the answer is obvious it would be at the shrugged you can recreate opal I mean you would have to be a brilliant and you would have to right you know it would take who knows how long and everything but I don't know that you can recreate that experience everything that the atlas shrug ties together the unbelievable aesthetic quality of an atlas shrugged you that is that that is not match I cannot be matched so I would have to say atlas shrug but let's let's make sure that never happens and we never face that choice do you have any recommendations on first at what stage in your studies of objectivism and then by what method people should read opar and study it so I'd say once you've read the novels and the key the key essays the nonfiction essays of iron man's I would say opal would be next so the key being you know the the objectivist ethics what is capitalism philosophy suddenly philosophy who needs it which I think grounds the need for philosophy I'm sure there's a few others that are missing but but once you read a few of those core I think it's time to get to opal among other things because I mean I I find for example iron man's essay what is capitalism to me is one of the hardest essays you know it takes me a lot it takes a lot to understand and I think I think reading opal helps understand what is capitalism and and if you think about the objectivist ethics which is unbelievably condensed it is a relatively short essay and and then you you think about the number of chapters that Dr. Peacock dedicates to the ethics in in opal again you get you get that reinforcement you get that back and forth how to study it I mean I like the idea of study groups I I like the idea of getting a small group together and and going through it because I think other people's questions often so often you read something and it just seems obvious to it seems right to you right it just it just clicks but you don't really think about it and somebody else it might not be similar to some might ask a question about it suddenly you're forced to confront the fact that you don't really know it it just you just read it it kind of makes sense and you just went on and and opal is very well written so there is it's good to take the time to slow down and to stop and to really really think in a study group in a sense forces you to do that so I'm a big proponent of doing that of course I think Tal would appreciate this you can also audit the OEC where they're going over where they're going over the opal and that that would be a great way to do it as well thank you another online question about other study resources and this one comes from someone else named your own while opal was how I originally started to study objectivism I have since also learned to listen to OTI objectivism through induction and understanding objectivism how does one integrate all of these and other resources since each one has a different approach to studying objectivism and there's a follow-up question from a someone else will OTI ever be transcribed or edited into a book? Objectivism through induction I don't know if it'll ever be edited into a book look they're all a different approach as OTI subjectivism through induction it is a course that Dr. Peacock did in the late 1990s mid to late 1990s in where he presents a number of the principles of objectivism and shows how they are induced from the factor reality usually what we do is reduction we take we take the principle and then reduce it down going down level by level of abstraction down to the concretes here you you start with the concrete what kind of concrete what kind of examples what kind of things would you have to observe in reality to induce the more abstract and then the more and then what abstractions would you have to induce to get to this higher level abstraction and I I think that's a very advanced course so I would say that's something you should do after you've really integrated the philosophy and the reason is it's the only person who's actually induced objectivism really induced objectivism as I meant so while it is incredibly helped to make the philosophy real to you first you have to learn I think the philosophy and then learn how to induce it so I would say that would be late at least that's that's my best sense of that site is that there is did I answer the question Ben I don't know where you are you're hiding back major parts what's that there is also about understanding objectivism if you want to say something about yes I mean understanding it objectivism is another perspective on studying objectivism where the primary value or a value of it is to avoid certain errors in studying objectivism primarily rationalism for most of us rationalism is the issue for some of us empiricism but usually it's rationalism and rationalism is this idea that the concepts are floating that they're not tied to reality you haven't done the work to reduce them to reality so it's it's really a heavy emphasis on do it right really integrate and reduce get a you know make the philosophy yours don't allow your concepts to stay floating so I you know I think understanding objectivism is one of dr. pico's most important courses because look we're all rationalists in the beginning we really I mean you can't not be because you read out the shrugged and you you have a an entire life's philosophy handed to you on a silver platter it's right there and all these abstract ideas yes that concretize through a story but but you get excited about these abstract ideas this these philosophical ideas you don't have the life experience to know what they really connect to in reality you've got one story and then it's a it's in a sense of life work now to figure out what these things what these ideas really mean and how to tie them to reality and that takes work it takes time so initially I mean when I was 16 I read out the shrugged I thought I knew everything that's it right I knew objectivism I knew philosophy and explained everything and it took me years to figure out all the things I didn't know and how the what extent these ideas were floating abstractions and to what extent I really had to tie them to reality and and connect them to the facts and and it takes time so because of the way we're presenting with the philosophy or almost always going to be rationalistic and I think understanding objectivism is a is a is an important tool in making that real to you so facing it and then undoing undoing it and and and again figuring out what these all these abstract ideas really mean hey you're on hey I feel weird not super chatting you but yes yeah I mean how much how much I've got $20 if you'd like I can't I can't solicit use it has to go to talk so I and I think we all share the same frustration when we run across people who have read Atlas shrugged to the fountain head and dismiss it and I've either they don't like the philosophy or they don't like the writing style and I always recommend well you should really read Ainran's nonfiction works as well better yet read opar I am curious if in your entire history of either of studying this or in any university and philosophy classes if anybody has actually read opar and come up with any kind of critique like real critique of it not that I know of I'm sure people have tried and I'm sure there's stuff out there on the web that you can probably find but but no I haven't seen anything no and and look some people do come to objectives of through the nonfiction and not through the fiction and and to some people somehow the fiction doesn't affect them and the nonfiction gets them somehow I don't understand that because I you know it's so much the other way around for me but but so that path is possible so referring them to the nonfiction is definitely definitely a good strategy but no I haven't seen any real critique of it hi there hey so the first thing I wanted to do is just kind of thank you because my first Ocon Leonard Dr. Peacock was presenting his dim hypothesis and it was really through him that I deeply connected with the philosophy and I came to this hoping that you would do justice to my experience with him and I was like yeah but who can do justice to Leonard Peacock and you did such a beautiful job and I just really want to thank you so the standing I was definitely for him but also thank you for doing justice to what he's accomplished it's also really nice to just see the admiration and it's just it's a beautiful thing to bear witness to and then the second thing was to do justice to people I'm not one of them so this is not like I'm not being defensive but I know people who really didn't have a strong response to Atlas shrugged or the fountainhead who had just some of the most beautiful responses to the philosophy that I've ever seen and one of the reasons and some of them have felt guilty because of it and one of the reasons that I've discovered with the few people that I worked with is because they didn't know how to engage with art it wasn't an issue they actually didn't get what was special it wasn't coming through to them because they really lacked a literary competency to know what to do with art and how to make sense of things and when things are challenging in the book and so much is they were trained to just gloss over it or to try to fit it into the closest compartment of something that was familiar so that they couldn't experience what was special about it and so for that Lisa Van Dam of here here if you struggle with getting value from the novels and she's somebody who's the great to engage with to get better at that but I just wanted to acknowledge that as a potential reason why people might not respond yeah I think you're right and if anything I think that's only gonna get worse unfortunately because we live in a very cynical era and kids grow up on on South Park and the Simpsons and it's it's you know if you grow up on on the cynicism that it's in our arts that it's everywhere it's very hard then to appreciate I think it's very hard to appreciate the ideal the romanticism romanticism is just so far into them it's so strange because everything that's being produced not everything but almost everything is so cynical that it's yes it's hard for them to comprehend what it is that's being conveyed through the art another online question your own yeah do you have any idea how many copies of opa roughly have been sold in the US and worldwide since its publication I don't so that's a question for I'm just gonna ask Tal to find out somebody at the Institute knows so it's just a matter of sending their email to the right person and figuring that out so thanks asking the question we'll try to get you an answer later in the conference how about that yes hello Ron again it has been translated by the way into a number of languages so it's in it's in Spanish now in the first translation I mean it's in Czech an objective is to usually is at Okon but it's probably not here because of COVID it was responsible for it being translated check it's in Portuguese in Brazil and in one or two other languages I'm pretty sure but but certainly in those three yeah you already touched this a couple of minutes ago but I would like to ask the question in a different way or from a different point of view when approaching to people who aren't really fond of philosophy how would you present I ain't ran to them without them trying to blow her off it's like what makes her different as a philosopher why why should I read her instead of cotton why cuz cuz you can actually read her well what makes a difference is that this is a philosophy for living on earth it's a philosophy for living it's a philosophy with guidance to be happy to living the best life you can live to to to individual flourishing to to living well and that's that you know but it's a philosophy it's not just some self-help thing that's floating it's a philosophy that teaches you how to think and how to think properly so it's it's a philosophy for human beings to be the best human beings they can be and that I don't think there's anything there's no other philosophy like it in that sense one more online question yeah you mentioned that Tara Smith did a whole book on the virtues what other sections in opar would you like to see expanded into books which have not already been discussed by others I mean all of it I mean every subsection should be a book there's so much there there's so much work still to be done in objectivism in in developing and concretizing and explaining in in expanding the ideas the thoughts that there's there's in every single chapter it could be a book or several books so I don't think there's really a limit to this the new applications constantly there's new things to apply these ideas to there's so the different contexts in which one could be writing about these ideas so yeah don't don't stop writing books if if you guys are thinking about writing books by the way I think Dr. Smith is doing a talk today on integrity right so this afternoon is a talk on integrity she'll get a in much better sense of integrity from the talk this afternoon yeah Keith so since I'm the end of the line here I want to just take a minute to talk about another way that we're going to be celebrating opar at the conference so could you put the slide up so we're actually going to have an opar quote contest so there's ten parts with our ten general session session throughout the conference including the state of a right tomorrow and before and after each session we're going to put up two questions and then at the next session we'll put up the answers to this round and then the next one the set of questions after that so we're not tracking your scores so as it says up there winners receive bragging rights and personal satisfaction the rules are simple don't look it up you know this is supposed to be sort of for memory or from guessing from the multiple choice but we wanted to have a way to engage with the book you know that would be kind of a fun activity throughout the conference and also the online audience can participate in this as well so enjoy the quote contest and you know it should be a fun thing throughout the conference so and don't call out the answers please and we're not keeping score people we don't have like a social score with facial facial recognition you can keep your own you can keep your own score and post your numbers throughout on the Facebook group or something like that that's right we have an open mic nobody's curious that we can end early if that's the case all right yes so I began studying Objectivism toward the end of high school I live near New York City so I went to all these things my dad took me and so that would have been maybe unbelievably 1973 ish and at that time over the next few years I had pretty much read and attended everything related to Objectivism through college and I just wanted to comment that now all these years later it's just unbelievable to me how this has exploded and how I can't even keep up with how many things there are to read and things there are to go to and people there are to go and see that I'm incredibly impressed well that's that that is absolutely true and it really is it's great to hear because and it's it's you know I when when Linda Peacock used this when I ran and then Linda Peacock used to do the Fort Hall Forum talks and hundreds and sometimes thousands of people would go there now first it's it's granted so Linda Peacock and I ran right particularly I ran but that was one event a year and it was pretty much it particularly if you didn't live in New York City today there dozens of events right maybe in a known COVID year hundreds of events I mean there was a period where I was doing a hundred events a year over a hundred events a year they are and again not to compare myself to Iron Man and Linda Peacock but but still just a volume of events their books their podcast the the there's commentary and then of course there's all the old material there's all of Linda Peacock's courses which are available now for free on YouTube but on the Iron Man campus so there's the volume of material the quality of the content particularly all those courses and Iron Man interviews which are now online you can all access it's just it really is it really is amazing and fun to see the number of new intellectuals that we have the number of young people that are going to be up on the stage in the years to come is really thrilling and exciting I just did I just finished a public speaking workshop with a number of them and there's real talent and you're going to see them up here again in the years to come and yeah I think this is you know this is going to continue to grow often when something is exponential you don't know it's exponential until you're well up onto the curve but at some point this will become exponential so in spite of all my usual pessimism about the state of the world I'm not pessimistic about this I'm not pessimistic about what we can achieve what we have achieved and what we will achieve I think that great things are in our future hello Iran Dr. Peacock had a very interesting anecdote about how he became on a first-name basis with Iron Man I wonder if you had a similar experience with Dr. Peacock I don't remember that anecdote with Dr. Peacock and Iron Man but no I I I have no recollection when that happened and how that happened so you know I first met him in 1987 I'm sure he doesn't remember and I remember I was with the Fendemind from Israel and we went to see him and had a private meeting with him to try to get the rights to translate Iron Man into Hebrew all her essays and it was a such an easy meeting I mean it was we were prepared for for real negotiations and it was and he basically gave us the right to translate anything we wanted into Hebrew in those days and then I got to know him really in the mid-1990s as a you know so I when I left the house I've got I think five copies of Opa one that's falling apart and then three of these softcovers and another hardback are and I just grabbed a softcover and I brought it here and I didn't realize this is the one he signed I think the only one he signed and it's from July 1984 and in the context he signed it to me here I was running an art business I was selling art posters and art stuff and and which Leonard really loved and still has some of the art that I sold him or we sold him on his wall in his house today so I got to know him through that then I was a student of his and I'm sure somewhere in that art gallery or somewhere as a student you know I'm also Israeli so it first name basis comes naturally thank you hi your comments about how Atlas shrugged resonates with some people and not others that that really hit hard for me thank you for that and also how you felt completely alone like the only person who liked these ideas just thanks for showing that because that really resonated with me but also what you said about how one possible theory could be hero worship or the need for heroes I think there's really something there so if you or anyone else qualified wants to explore that please do that that sounds like a really good theory I I think so and it's and it's something that can't be you know I think we could do we could do some surveys we can do some studies and we can figure this out but I definitely think there's something about the hero worshiping growing up I mean I was definitely a hero worshipper as a kid I was always looking for heroes I mean all the wrong heroes of course the ones who like to jump on grenades but for some cause but there was definitely that element of of of hero worshipping and that just an Atlas shrugged I mean how can you not I mean that's my point no I can't understand people don't respond to Atlas because how can you not respond to these amazing heroes and and heroes in a way and in things that I wouldn't have expected right so I grew up because I grew up in Israel the heroism was military heroism heroism was for the country for the tribe for the for the car and here were heroes of industry heroes with regard to ideas heroes with regard to love heroes in aspects that I'd never considered possible in terms of what heroism meant and yet it completely it clicked it completely can I completely connected to it right thanks everybody have a great conference