 All right, what is justice? The subheading in Opa for justice is justice as rationality in the evaluation of man. Justice as rationality in the evaluation of man. So justice is the application of rationality to human relations, to evaluating other people, to judging other people. Justice, quote Leonard again, is the virtue of judging men's character and conduct objectively, on of acting accordingly, granting to each man that which he deserves. Another way of thinking of it is treating people the way they deserve. Justice is required, you is the virtue that requires you to treat people the way they deserve to be treated. Now, why is this important? Why is it important to judge people and treat them the way they deserve, right? Why is this such a crucial, objectivist virtue? Well, because as I said at the beginning, human beings are a great value to you and can be a great danger to you. That is, if you value your life, if you value your life, then you must figure out which people are worthy of dealing with and which people are not. We live, we live, which is good, in a society. We live with other people. We gain potentially massive benefits from other people. But because we live with other people, we could also be really, really, really hurt by other people, physically damaged, spiritually damaged, monetarily damaged. People can really, the bad people can do immense damage and I don't need to tell you about the history of human society. I mean, just think of politicians and the damage they can do to your life. But think of a bad business partner. Think about what a bad business partner can do to you. The extent to which you go into business with somebody, the extent to which you're exposing yourself to this person, to the extent to which they can destroy your reputation, they can destroy you financially, they can make it really difficult for you to recover. If they turn out to be bad, if they light sheet steel, you're their business partner, you're gonna be held accountable. You're gonna have to find a way to recover. You might be holding the bag financially. But in every respect, they are impacting your life in significant ways. Think about a friendship where somebody stabs you in the back, tells lies about you behind your back, but they're your friend. So people believe them and they can do you real damage, not to mention the emotional, spiritual damage of having been somebody's friend and then being stabbed in the back. I mean, there are very few occurrences in life that are in a sense worse than that. You've given somebody's trust. You've engaged with somebody on an intimate level and they're not worthy of it. And when that becomes a reality to you, you feel naked, exposed, vulnerable. It truly is horrible. Think of somebody you love and they betrays you and how bad that is, how much damage that can do to you. Again, physically, materially, spiritually, emotionally. So other people, even if you have immense self-esteem, even as we discussed last time, you are amazingly independent. We interact with other people on many, many levels. From business relationships, we trade, we employ people, we go to work for people. We have friends, we have acquaintances, we have love relationships. And those are all amazing, rewarding, satisfying, beneficial relationships to have. But when they go bad, they can be really awful. So from a perspective of your own life, as an egoist, it is on the one hand crucial to avoid evil, to avoid bad people, to avoid doing yourself damage by interacting with bad people. But of course, the flip side is even more important. The reward of dealing with good people, the reward of having satisfying relationships, the reward of great trade, the reward of employing great people, the reward of working for a great boss or a great company, the reward for interacting with good people and benefiting from what they produce, what they create, what they are is immense. It adds hugely to one's life. And in spite of the fact that it's easy to emphasize the negative, in spite of the fact that many of us think in terms of the negatives, objectivism is not focused on negatives, it's focused on the positive, it's focused on your life, it's focused on living a great, successful, wonderful, happy, flourishing, fulfilling life. And to do that, one wants to surround oneself with good people who represent one's values. And yes, as an aside, one wants to avoid the people who can do one's harm. But the focus should always be on the positive. The focus should always be on the way in which moral judgment, the way in which justice affects us positively. So the first thing to know about moral judgment is you've got it about, sorry, about justice, is that you have to judge. You have to judge. You have to judge other people. Morally judge other people. What does it mean to morally judge them? Judge their character. Are they good people? They are principles. We're talking about some of them. Moral principles. Do they live up to the moral principles necessary for successful human life? Or do they reject them? Whether they reject them explicitly or implicitly in action or in words, do they, to some extent or another, reject these principles? Do they act and speak against them? If they do, if they are not moral people, then one should avoid them. If they act immorally, then one should avoid them. And if they're good, you know, they're a benefit of my life. And depending on the context, interaction is a good thing. So moral judgment is essential. It's what justice requires. It means judging other people, having an assessment of other people. Good, bad, mediocre. But even mediocre. In what sense mediocre? In what ways are they good? In what ways are they bad? What things, is it okay to interact with them on? What things you wanna avoid completely from them? Christopher says, judge yourself as well. Yes, you should judge yourself as well. And we'll really get to self-judgment when we talk about pride. Pride really, the virtue of pride, really involves judging oneself. But the virtue of justice involves judging other people. It's the application of rationality to the challenge of judging other people. As Peacock says, rationality in the evaluation of men. And what does rationality in the evaluation of men mean? It means going by the facts, going by evidence, not going by emotion, first impressions, instinct, intuition, whatever. It's by using your mind, we're using reason, facts, evidence, logic, figuring out. And again, I don't know that there's anything more difficult to judge than other human beings. But that's why you need to use reason more than ever. More than ever, right? You always need to use reason. So there's a common phrase in our culture today, right? And oh no, don't judge, don't judge, so that you will not be judged. But that's basically saying, don't strive to be a good person. Don't strive to be moral. Don't strive to attain morality, because if you're good, why would you be afraid to be judged? So, objectivism holds the opposite of you. Our view is judge and be prepared to be judged. And there's important implication to all of this that Ayn Rand discusses. And that is the you are the product of you. The you shape your character. The you shape your soul. That you are a self-creation. That you are in control. That you are not just influenced by happen hand. So whatever happens out there, your genes or the environment or what your mother did to you when you were four years old, that in terms of your actions and your thoughts, maybe not in terms of your emotions, because that most psychology in that sometimes is harder to control and sometimes needs professional help to control. But in terms of your thoughts and your actions, you are in control. And therefore, what you say and what you do, you should be judged on. What you say and what you do are products of you. See, today in our culture, we have this attitude of, oh no, no, people are not responsible for themselves. They're not responsible for their actions. They're not responsible for their thoughts. They're just products of, I don't know, Russian election interference. I mean, note that no Russian can actually go into your brain and change your chemistry. All they can do is give you information that you then can check out and find whether they're right or wrong, whether they're good or bad. But you have to decide what information you accept as truth. Nobody else is responsible for that. You shape your decisions. You shape your actions. And therefore, you must be judged based on those. And other people should be judged as if they do, even though many of them default, don't use reason to shape their conclusions and to shape their actions. But since they have the capacity to do so, since they have the ability to do so, they should be judged accordingly. They should be judged as if they did. And in that sense, in that sense, everybody you interact with should be judged within the context, within the context of what kind of interaction you're having with them. I mean, you don't have to spend enough time figuring out if your grocer is good or bad. But if some information you come across that he's a fraud, smuggling in second rate products and selling them off as, you know, I don't know, first rate products lying to you, stealing, cheating, then avoid the grocer, sanction him, condemn him, condemn him through your action by not having anything to do with him. Jennifer asks, and by the way, I'll take Super Chat questions, I'll give priority to Super Chat questions that are on the topic. And there should be a lot of questions here. I mean, I'm not, don't wanna put any ideas into your minds, but you know, this is not easy. How to judge other people, what appropriate actions this has to do with the fact of sanctioning other people, who you get up on stage with to debate and who you don't, why you don't, some people, you do others. These are not simple issues, but they're all issues of justice and they're all issues related to egoism. They're related to your life. They're related to the benefit or harm of your life. Jennifer says, some people prefer pets to other humans because animals can't lie, but animals can't choose. Isn't it the fact that a person chooses to be good that makes that person a value to you? Yes. The value that an animal represents is you're projecting onto them. It's in a sense, some kind of unconditional love that they're giving you, right? It's of course also conditioned and you treating them well, but there's no choice there. So you get kind of a sense of, some kind of sense of pure emotion, those dogs with those eyes that look at you, gaga eyes kind of looking at you in admiration, right? That as soon as you open the door, they rush to you and celebrate your arrival. But while that gives you that sense of being loved, being appreciated, being seen, it doesn't come anyway, I think, anywhere close. I don't have much of a relationship to pets and animals. It doesn't come close to getting that from another human being. Where you know it is a choice, where you know it is a cognitive, rational, and emotional, emotional, but emotional based on rational values. Response to you, that is so much deeper, so much more meaningful, so much more pleasurable, so much more important. So, and it comes from the fact that it was chosen, imagine if your spouse loved you because they were conditioned to do so. They had no choice about it. It just wouldn't be the same. Choice is crucial. Free will is crucial to everything we talked about in ethics. Ethics is meaningless without this idea of choice. So it's, yeah, so it's crucial to shape your own soul, it's crucial to make you the best you that you can be. It's crucial to live up to your values, to live up to morality, and then let them judge. Part of your self-esteem comes from the idea, from the knowledge, from the knowledge that here I am, judge me. Judge me for what I've said, judge me for what I've done. I've said this before on a show. The only two options, your judgment can be right or wrong. If it's wrong, it's on my business. If it's right, hopefully it matches up to my judgment, but if it's right and it doesn't, then it's good for me to know. Andrew writes, a lot of religious folks pay lip service to non-judgment, but a hyper-judgmental on the brother's keeper primes, yes. See, every religion or morality requires you to make some form of judgment of other people, but the standard for judging is not, cannot be the benefit that other people represent for you, to you. What does it mean to judge somebody based on the premise of altruism? Because if they're doing something that's good for you, then how should you judge them? Well, you have to be careful because you don't wanna be selfish and you don't wanna have a positive judgment of them because you are benefiting, it completely mixes you up. Good people sacrifice, you should be sacrificing. And by the way, one of the reasons people don't want to be judged themselves is because they know they don't live up to their own moral standards because you cannot live up to altruism. So one of the main reasons people don't want you to judge them is because they know they fail. They know they're far from their own ideal. They know that they don't live up to the altruistic standard and almost nobody can. Really, nobody can, but, and nobody, very few people actually try on a day-to-day basis to live up to the standard of altruism. They couldn't survive if they did. And it's no, not fun. It's a frigging disaster. So think of this, they walk around afraid of being judged because they know that if somebody was honest about they're judging them, he would say, but you're not living up to your own ideals. You're not living up to your own morality. You claim to be a Christian, but other than go to church on Sunday, what are you actually doing for the poor? How many of God's requirements and commandments do you actually practice? Do you actually follow? How much are you evading, distorting, pretending? So they can't live up to it and therefore they don't want to be judged and therefore they don't judge. And when they do judge, by what standard should they judge? By the standard of benefit to themselves? Well, that would be egoistic. So by what standard? Well, they've been told that honesty is a good, as they judge people as honest to dishonest, right? But since the connection of that honesty to their own values, to their own life, to their own happiness is not solid, right? I mean, we understand, I hope, that somebody else's dishonesty is bad for me. It's bad for me to interact with somebody who's dishonest and I'm gonna stay away from somebody who's dishonest, not because there's some abstraction here, commandment that says dishonesty is bad, but because I know, I know I have a principle that shows me but I know the principle is true because I've seen it in reality, I've proved it to myself, that somebody else's dishonesty is going to hurt me, that the model is the practicalness and somebody else's immorality has practical consequences on my life. And that's why I avoid it. So, objectives should be passionate about their morality, passionate about condemning evil and passionate about rewarding and supporting the good. What we need today, what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist broods. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes, that should be at least 100. I figure at least 100 of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it, but at least the people who are liking it, you know, I wanna see a thumbs up, there you go. Start liking it, I wanna see that go to 100. All it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this, and you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego, it's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. So, you know, and if you don't like the show, give it a thumbs down. 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