 Okay, so let's pivot to nihilism or nihilism. So what is nihilism? So I think when it's used, it's Neil, it's the zero, it's destruction. It's destruction for the sake of destruction. And Ayn Rand has, I think, a unique and deeply insightful view of what that means. So I think the equivalent, she once in a while uses nihilist or, you know, but the formulation she uses, at least from Atlas Shrugged onward, is hatred of the good for being the good. And I think that's her account of what in the sort of 20th century modern world, it's put as nihilism. And so it's a response to value, so hatred of the good for being the good, it's that the person in some sense, either more consciously explicitly or more subconsciously, views the thing in question, the thing or phenomenon as good as representing a value. And rather than the response being, okay, this is something I want, I should go after, I should respect, I should admire, the response is hatred. And it's, this is something to destroy it because it's good, because it's a value. And I mean, one of her generic definition of value is, that which one acts to gain our keep. And normally if your reaction to a value or thinking of something as good is, I want it, give me some of that, give me more of that. And here it's the response is the reverse. It's good, therefore I need to destroy it. And is that, so where does that come from? I mean, is there, I mean, there's no philosophy of nihilism. It seems more psychological than anything. Yeah, I mean, I think she thinks it's root is psychological. Now, I do think there's a philosophy of nihilism, which we can talk about in a moment, but she thinks of the philosophy. And I think this is right. She thinks of it as rationalization for the motive. So it's primarily an issue of motive. What's driving? What is the person after? And it's, he wants to destroy a value because he thinks it's a value. And then it's, you can dress that up and rationalize it. And she says, like it's so, she views this as subhuman. And in one of the essays, she talks about these creatures. And in contrast, like to evil people like a criminal, a criminal is, he sees a million dollars and it's, I don't want to work for it, but I still want it. It's not like I'm just going to burn it all. It's, I want to get it. He's going to get it by completely illegitimate means. And she says, like this in comparison to the nihilist, this is still a human reaction. The nihilist is, he sees a million dollars and wants to light in on fire. It's not that he, and that's not a criminal. That's below a criminal. So she thinks of it in terms of a motive and it's, it's, it's the, the form of evil. So it's, it's the lowest motive you can have. And so it's hard for a person to even admit to himself that that's his motive and that's the need for rationalizations then. Yeah. And it's, it's, and the psychology here is, is kind of a hatred, a hatred of life, of reality, of the world, of everything. So the, the essay in which she talks most about this, now there's a lot in Atlas shrugged. So the villains are driven by hatred of the good for being the good. And that comes out in the story. So the two things to read, if you want her perspective on this is Atlas shrugged and pay attention to the villains. And they're what they do, what's driving them, the way they rationalize what is driving them, and how, how and why those rationalizations are exposed by the end of the story. So this is a major aspect about the shrugging. And then she wrote an essay and the title is important. It's age of envy. And she, so she, this is written in the early 1970s and she thinks the cultural atmosphere is saturated with hatred of the good for being the good or neilism. And she brings up many forums in there and there she talks about how she thinks psychologically this comes about that someone could have this as, as one motive among many. And then as a dominant motive that is sort of, you can talk about a person as he's essentially a neilist, not just he has a neilistic element in him. And it's, she thinks of it as it's a default on taking responsibility for your mind and your life. And for her taking responsibility means exercising your rational faculty and exercising here means like really developing it. It's becoming functioning at a conceptual principle level. And when the, she calls it an anti-conceptual mentality that there's people who rebel against the need to take full responsibility, but full responsibility is not like get a job or what she means is a very deep level of taking responsibility for your life. And when you don't do that, all kinds of things go wrong in a person. And one and sort of the worst thing that can happen is that your response to values, which in a sense you've forsaken because you've forsaken your means to reach values. You've forsaken rational life, rational effort. That's the only way to reach values and to sort of justify that. The worst form is to have a reverse view of values and to rather than ever love for values is to have a hatred. But it's, it's, she has a complex view of how this arises in a person. In what book is the age of envy? It's in, so it used to be called the new left, the anti-industrial revolution. It's now, and there's some additional essays and it's the return of the primitive. But there's two, so she talks, and this is relevant for thinking of, so the title is the age of envy. She also writes about the rise of tribalism. And so I don't think she would be surprised by her cultural, she'd be disappointed in, that America has come to this, but that were increasingly tribal. She was talking about in the seventies and she thinks that's the anti-conceptual mentality as well. She has a series of essays in the seventies where she's talking about the anti-conceptual mentality and what it results in. And what's more prominent is tribalism. But I think she thinks the worst form of that is, it becomes hatred of the good for being the good. And how does, how does her definition of, definition of nihilism compare to kind of the standard definition in the culture? So I put it something like destruction for destruction's sake. And I think that's more typical when people think of it, it's nihilism that doesn't accomplish anything. Like it's not, we need to tear this down to build something better, build something new. So it's, we got to tear this down as an end in itself. So I think that's how it's, and there is such a phenomenon, and people are right to, like there's people who all they're about is burning things, tearing down, they don't have any positive message, positive vision, but they seem really animated. So it's like they want to destroy it for, for the sake of destruction. I think what her perspective adds is the, it adds the psychology about this, but it adds the value perspective that, and then, and that there's, what's happening is it's the opposite response to values than what's the norm. And this is what, why it's so hard to fathom and so shocking. It's, it's like, even if you disagree about values, it's, if you view something as a value, doesn't everybody think, okay, that's then go and get it and, and you want it. And here it's something that it simultaneously identifies it as a value and wants to destroy it. So what are some, what are the philosophies that justify or, or, or, or provide justification for nihilism? Yeah. So the, so she called, she called Emanuel Kant the most evil person in history. Yep. And I think one way to understand that is she views him as a nihilist. So he's after destruction for the sake of destruction, but now more deeply it's, he's able to understand what is valuable and wants to destroy it. And he writes a whole philosophy that makes this seem rational and moral to do. And her view is like, this can't be done innocently. You can't have a philosophy that is so single-mindedly destructive and think it was an honest error that it just, he just got it wrong. He, I mean it's really trying, but unfortunately he got it wrong. So she views it as his system, as a system of rationalization. And if you think of what the Kantian viewpoint is, it's reasons cut off from reality. It's unable to know anything about reality, but that doesn't really matter. Yeah. So it's, it's not like for, for someone like Hume, it's a real problem. It's, we want to be able to understand reality. Our whole life depends on being it. And if induction doesn't work and you can't even know if there's cause and effect and you can't even really know if there's a world outside of you. This is a big problem. Yeah. For Kant, it's not a problem. It's just, yeah, that's the way you're cut off. Don't think you know anything about, he'll cause the numinal world. And then in morality, morality is not for the sake of anything. It doesn't, you don't achieve an afterlife. You don't achieve, he's adamant that it's not about the pursuit of happiness. That whole enlightenment thing, that's all wrong. It's not morality. If you're doing it because you want to gain and so on. It's duty for the sake of duty, which means it, I mean the colloquial way to put it, but it's the Kant's way worse than it is virtue for the sake of virtue. Like it's, why do it? You're supposed to do it. And so there's no, there's nothing positive. There's no positive vision in Kant. And one way to think about it, he's Plato without any positive vision. So Plato thought, yeah, you can't know this world and stop trying to orient yourself to another world. And what reason, the philosopher kings, what they do when they're really thinking and so on, is they're oriented to another world, not this world. And morality is about this kind of dedication as well, but it accomplishes something. And it accomplishes something, Plato I think even thinks in this world, but certainly it prepares you for the next world. And you'll be, if you lead a proper life, you'll be sort of reunited with the forums and so on. It's mystical, but it's positive. And Kant takes all that away and says, yeah, no, you're cut off from reality. And there's nothing, there's no higher reality that you're gonna reason, reaches, and so on. And morality, yeah, no, you don't gain from morality, but you still have to do it. Why do you think he has such universal appeal? I mean, people defend him and he had this massive amount of influence. Well, there's two. So he unleashes the bad people. So part of the appeal comes from he unleashes a torrent of irrationalism and of smashing. So if you think of 19th century as a great century in terms of human prosperity, but when you think of philosophically, 19th century is a disaster. And what it unleashes is a whole torrent of emotionalists. We don't have to go by reason anymore. We know reason doesn't work. It doesn't achieve anything. You don't gain any knowledge. Don't tell us we have to go by reason. We can go by our emotions. And this is so explicit in 19th century, pretty continental philosophy, but 19th century philosophy as a whole. We're freed from the straight jacket of reason. And it unleashes that kind of person. So there's an appeal to the people who want to smash. And this is why she viewed him as so evil. It's not just that he's rationalizing hatred of values. He's giving people and a whole culture, the ability to rationalize this. And that empowers the bad people and disempowers the good people. And I think that's what she thinks happens in the 19th and 20th centuries. But so that's one aspect. And the other aspect is he exploits all kinds of vulnerabilities in the positive case for reason, for values, for freedom. And this is the sense in which, or it's why I view Rand as she's one of the four major philosophers. Aristotle answers Plato. And nobody answered Khan until Ein Rand. So he exploits things in the enlightenment. I mean, as I said already by Hume, you have all the, I mean the essential skepticism that we can't prove that reason works. We can't prove that it leads to knowledge. We can't prove induction or we can't validate it. We can't even validate that there's cause and effect. Yeah, all our science relies on this. But we don't really know that there is cause and effect. And validate morality. The morality of pursuit of happiness. We have no way to connect that to reality. Yeah. And their justification sort of is appeal to God as we're talking about rights. And Kant's brings in, yeah, that's all mystical. So don't think this is rational. Don't think you're based on reason when you do this. So let's see. So we have a few in one question of nihilism. Do nihilists use altruism to achieve destruction? But they themselves never believed in the altruism ideal? Or are they nihilists? Or many nihilists form altruists to recognize that utopia is impossible and begin to resent existence and to wage war against it? I mean, I think the leading crusaders for altruism are there's a nihilistic element. It's about destruction. It's about sat. I mean, so another way you can put a destruction for the sake of destruction. If you put it in morality as we were talking about earlier, it's sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice. It's sacrifice that doesn't accomplish anything, doesn't gain anything. It's completely unintelligible. Like if you ask just thinking about religion, because I think religion and especially Christianity coming after ancient Greece and Rome has a significant element of nihilism in it. That is, they were about the destruction of ancient Greece and Rome and the thinkers and the thinking and the philosophy of ancient Greece and Rome. It was destruction and not because they have something better. It was destruction to stamp out reason. And you find a lot in the Christians about this. And if you think of it, just the kind of mystical story that's presented, why does God need sacrifice? He's omnipotent, all-knowing. He can't be affected by anything. What does he need me not to eat meat for or not to engage in sex outside of marriage? How does this accomplish anything? And it doesn't. You can't make any sense that you're achieving anything. You can make sense that you're losing. It's very explicit in the book of Job. Job got an oath to test Job. Job was in his entire family. He destroys his livelihood, destroys everything. And when Job complains, and he spends most of the book complaining to God about it, God basically says, who are you? Do you even ask me any of these things? And only when Job accepts that, basically drops his knees and accepts that he is nothing and nobody. And so if you think about it, God is the worst kind of tyrant who wants obedience for the sake of obedience, not for the sake of a goal, not for the sake of you being happy and not for the sake of building some universe or whatever. He wants your obedience for the sake of obedience and nothing else, and he will randomly cause you damage just to test your obedience. And this is part of the Bible. This is a book in the, it's not like something that was written, a critiquing card. This is part of the Jewish Bible. And so once Job, of course, says, yes, I accept all that, God gives him another wife and other kids and replaces all that. It's just, somebody says, Jennifer's a sadistic, absolutely sadistic. And so going back to the question, there's a difference between a follower of Christianity and particularly when you get into the dark and middle ages, when they never hear of any other viewpoint of saying, like, okay, this doesn't really make any sense to me, but I sort of, I can't live with it. I can't live without it because I don't know anything other, any other way to live and so on. So I sort of have to try to make some kind of compromise and peace and live my life sort of Christian, sort of non, that's very different than someone who preaches this, who makes their life that I'm going to preach this that is this, I mean, I was going to put it, it's nonsense, but it's way worse than nonsense. This stuff that incapacitates people's minds and just is commanding them to sacrifice for no reason. Like if you're preaching that, that's very different than someone who sort of accepts it, doesn't, can't envision an alternative and sort of tries to make some kind of terms with it and still live. And that's, that's the sense. So for altruism more broadly, there can be people like that, but the person pushing that what morality is about, is about you don't count, your life doesn't count, don't be selfish, it's about other people, give to them and so on. That's very different than the person who all I've heard all my life is altruism. So something like it must be true and so on. And I can't really live with it, but I'm not going to live without it because then I'll be completely immoral. And so I'll try to do something and that's not a nihilist. And it's not even a nihilistic element even in the portion. 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 brought. 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. 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 want to see a thumbs up. There you go. Start liking it. I want to 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. Like the show. 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