 Is there an inherent connection between atheism and objectivism? And if so, what can I, as a religious person, extract from Ayen Rahn's philosophy? Hi and welcome to my show, The World of Roy Jozefic. Today, we have a very special guest, Dr. Yaron Broek. Now, Yaron is a famous and an important thinker in our era. And in fact, we got specific requests to have him on the show, so I can safely say that in this case, no introduction is needed. Having said that, I will introduce you anyway. Yaron is the chairman of the Einwand Institute, is the host of the Yaron Broek show, the Yaron Broek podcast, and is the author of three books, including Equal is Unfair, which is a great book, by the way. So, Yaron, thank you so much for joining me today on the show. How are you? I'm doing well, how about you? And thank you for inviting me and I'm looking forward to this. Okay. Thank you. So, how is the resident in Puerto Rico? It's always beautiful, almost beautiful, but it's very nice, although we are under lockdown, so we've been under lockdown for two months. We have curfews in Puerto Rico. I can't go outside after 7 p.m. and it's been a rough two months in Puerto Rico. So, maybe California and Puerto Rico are not that different? Not in terms of politics. Indeed, the politics are worse in Puerto Rico than in California. Yes, just the tax rate. The tax rate is great. For me, not for the Puerto... Unfortunately, Puerto Ricans have very high taxes. So, it's a very unique situation I have in Puerto Rico. The world is not in great shape and Puerto Rico is not a complete escape from the state of the world. So, let's wish and hope that everything will be fine as soon as possible. Now, before we dive into the delicious things, there is one word that we are going to say a lot during our conversation and this word is objectivism. So, just for my viewer and just to make sure that we are all on the same page, how do you define objectivism? Well, first, objectivism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand. I mean, she was very careful in identifying objectivism is what she said, right? So, I, at best, am an interpreter of, it's my views on... So, if you really want to understand objectivism, study objectivism, you have to study Ayn Rand's books and lectures, Leonard Peacoff, who was a student. But in terms of objectivism quickly, what is the philosophy represent? Because it is an integrated philosophy that covers a lot, right? And so, we start with metaphysics and metaphysics, reality is what it is. It's not what you wish it is. There is no consciousness creating it. It is as it is. A is A and the law of causality applies to it. And of course, we as human beings in epistemology have the tool to know reality. We know reality through reason. Reason is that tool of cognition. It's the one way we know what is right and what is true and what is false. What is reality? We can't choose our emotions. Our emotions are not cognition. And we can't, and it's, we don't gain knowledge from revelation. Knowledge requires the use of reason and its application to reality. And then of course, only individuals can reason. And so, in morality, the individual is the center. So, she is a moral egoist. So, in morality, your life is your highest purpose. Your happiness is your moral purpose in life. Morality is about your success at living. It's not about sacrificing to others. And it's not about sacrificing others to you. It's about each of us as independent individuals living our lives in pursuit of our own happiness. Politically, the only political system consistent with the view of individual happiness, of individual autonomy, of individual living their own life, is capitalism. So, she rejects both socialism and all forms of statism. But she also rejected anarchy and all forms of subjectivism, which are very popular among some people who kind of listen to my podcast and libertarians. And then in aesthetics, which she viewed as a part of philosophy, an important part of philosophy, she was a romantic. Art presented life as it could and should be. And not as it is, which is naturalism, and not kind of as, not again, based on women emotion as much of what is called modern art is. So, those are the five benches of philosophy. She had a view on each one of them. I think she had a quite a unique and original view in all of them, particularly in epistemology on. And it's all, she views it all as an integrated system. Okay. Really see the integrated system. I'll just recommend a book. I think the best book on that is Lena Peacoff's Objectivism, The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. Oh, so this is great. And we will link the book below. So, I want to pause for a second on the metaphysical and the epistemological part, because it seems that capitalism in its core is an economic philosophy, where objectivism, it's like a metaphysical epistemological philosophy, which capitalism has a way to live derived from. Now, my question is, is there something inherently different between your capitalism and mine? Or objectivism means capitalism on steroids. Well, I don't know what capitalism on steroids really means. It certainly means consistent capitalism, uncompromising capitalism. And capitalism, more than just an economic system, it's a political system and a social system. So it really is about individual rights and the freedom of the individual to pursue his life and his happiness. So I would say that I don't think you can properly defend capitalism without a basis in epistemology and metaphysics. That is that if your metaphysics and epistemology are different than mine, then I fear your ability ultimately to defend it philosophically. And I see that with libertarians. Many libertarians, for example, who don't share maybe either of our philosophies, but who champion, they think they champion capitalism and they often do. They start with something called the non-aggression principle. So they say, well, aggression is evil. We all know that. And of course, the answer to that is nobody knows that. You know, aggression for almost all philosophies out there is fine. If you're forcing somebody to do good, if you're forcing somebody to act in a moral way, then there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing in our philosophical, or I would argue, our religious traditions that argue against coercion, against force, against violence. And so they start with that as an axiom where it cannot be an axiom. So you have to go back. You have to understand where the idea of aggression as bad comes from. And for that, you have to go to ethics. And to understand ethics properly, you need a theory of epistemology. And of course, epistemology rests ultimately on some view of metaphysics. So knowledge is integrated. Everything is connected to everything. And a flaw anywhere in your system will ultimately undercut, undermine the entire system. So you would argue that Einwand basically gave us the foundations, or the ideal foundations of capitalism as a way of society. I would say Einwand was the first philosopher to provide us with a philosophical foundation for capitalism. So lots of people before Einwand and during her life were advocates of capitalism. Ludwig von Mises, the great economist, certainly was an advocate of capitalism. And he understood its economic requirements at some extent, its political requirements. But he wasn't a philosopher. He was an economist. And what Einwand does is she presents a foundation. And of course, Farand, and she says this, right, capitalism is not the goal, right? Capitalism is the logical outcome of a particular theory. She said she was a defender of capitalism because she was a defender of egoism. And she was a defender of egoism because she was a defender of reason. So it all boils down really in what philosophy is primarily important for, is how you live your life, what you do with you, with yourself. And the outcome of that is we need a particular social political system to allow me to do that. But the payoff of philosophy is really ethics and even aesthetics. It's the sense in which how you live your life on a day-to-day basis. So the pivot point in Einwand, as opposed to like Adam Smith, is that Einwand's pivot point is how to live your life, whereas Adam Smith in the wealth of nation is what is the best economy? No, no, because I think Adam Smith was deeper than that and wrong, right? So Adam Smith, I mean, Einwand had a negative view of Adam Smith. I have a more positive view of him, but she definitely was negative because Adam Smith, if you remember before he wrote the wealth of nations, he wrote a theory of moral sentiment. So Adam Smith considered himself a moral philosopher, not an economist. And even in the wealth of nations is a lot of space dedicated to, in a sense, moral theory. And his moral theory is very conventional. It is very Christian. It is very anti-capitalist. And even as defensive capitalism, if you think about his defensive capitalism, this is the logic that Adam Smith deploys. He says, look, the actors within an economy, an economic system are all pursuing their own self-interest. He says, the baker doesn't bake the bread because he likes you, who cares about you. He's trying to make a living and hopefully he enjoys baking bread, but baking bread is he's doing it for himself. And the guy who delivers the bread to the grocery store is doing it for himself and all the different actors pursue their own self-interest. But then he says, now we know self-interest is suspect morally. We know self-interest is not good morally. Indeed, it is low. It is from our perspective, it's low. I mean, that's what morality, Christian morality... From a Christian moral perspective, and you mean... Christian moral perspective, it's low. But he says it turns out that when you aggregate these actions of these self-interested actors, and when you impose of it in a sense, an invisible hand, it turns out that all this immorality, he doesn't say it this way, this is my interpretation, all this immorality, adds up in aggregate to a better society. So a number of flaws here. One is his standard is society. Ayn Rand rejects that completely, whose standard is the individual. And he assumes self-interest is negative morally. When Ayn Rand says no, the whole point about morality is the pursuit of your own self-interest. That's what morality means. Okay, okay, but this is my next question. They have a very different view of that. And as a consequence, by the way, just an economic point. Addismit compromises on his economics. So even his economics is not 100% laissez-faire. So he says you might need a central bank, you might need this, you might need regulations here, you might need regulation there, because he doesn't trust businessmen. Because at the end of the day, he doesn't trust self-interest. He is suspicious of self-interest, and therefore he needs the state to do some regulations. And Ayn Rand, because she comes at capitalism as a conclusion of a whole philosophical system, by the time she gets there, she can be 100% consistent. I think that Thomas Sowell in the Principles of Economics, I don't know how you translate it to English, said that there is no one line in the wealth of nations that say good things about businessmen. So it resonates well with what you just said. Now, you said that Adam Smith's theory of philosophy was Christian by itself, and objectivism isn't an atheist philosophy. Well, the most interesting thing is an atheist philosophy, because atheism is not some positive view. All atheism says is... You don't need the divine, you don't need the transcendent. Don't believe in something where there's no evidence for it. So it's an negation of something. It's an negation of a God, or of anything mystical, or of anything that is not accessible to reason. So I don't consider objectivism atheist. I think atheism is an obvious outcome of objectivism. But objectivism is a positive philosophy. It's a pro-reality, pro-reason, pro-human cognition philosophical. So, since I live in Israel, the most dominant figure in Israel and promoting Einwand's idea, at least pragmatically, is Moshe Feiglin. And Moshe Feiglin is an orthodox. Now, you can say that he only takes parts of her philosophy and you have profound disagreements with him. Nevertheless, nevertheless, how do you think this is happening? How come a theistic-based idea resonates so well with him? Well, I mean, I think that he and others who are religious latch on to certain aspects of it. And look, you know, there's certain interpretations of Judaism. And I say certain interpretations because within Judaism, nobody agrees, right? I mean, the whole point of Judaism is that nobody agrees with anybody. And even about the interpretation of any statement in the Old Testament, you know, there are 50 rabbis with 50 opinions about what it says. But there are certain interpretations of Judaism that are more positive about or more consistent with some ideas within Objectivism, some ideas within Objectivism. So, and by the way, there are certain Christians who claim the same thing. I know Christians who are very religious, who claim that they agree with Objectivism on 95%. I know people who think Buddhism and Objectivism, there's a lot of consistency. So it's unique to Judaism, but I think there's more people within Judaism that view that there's certain interpretation of Judaism that is consistent. There's certain respect for reason within Judaism, particularly in the post Maimonides tradition. You know, Maimonides was an Aristotelian, and he was an Aristotelian philosopher within kind of the Spanish-Arab world. And he brought kind of Aristotle into Judaism and try to do that. So just like Thomas Aquinas brought, attempted to bring Aristotle into the Christian world, Maimonides brought it into the Jewish world. And there's certain positive view because of that of reason, of science, of using one's mind, which is, which one can see some consistency there. There is a certain, you know, Judaism is not Christianity. And there's a certain element in Judaism that is about individual happiness and there's a certain, you can interpret certain things about Judaism to be egoistic, right? To be about egoism. But again, it takes a certain interpretation. You can also be very much for sacrifice and so on. And I don't think Judaism is egoistic. I just think certain people can interpret it that way. And then there's a certain interpretation of Judaism. Again, it goes back to certain passages in the Old Testament. But again, Christians do the same thing that is Procapalism. That is, you know, we don't want a king. The, you know, the period of the, of the, of the, what do you call it? The judges, you know, we want individual freedom within the country. But there's also, I would argue, in Judaism, huge amount of religious intolerance, huge intolerance to ideas that are not consistent with Judaism. There is authoritarianism within Judaism. Very strong line of authoritarianism within Judaism. So they, so, you know, Fagelin and I would disagree very vehemently about my interpretation of certain parts of Judaism. And, and, you know, I've, I've met Fagelin. I've had long discussions with Fagelin. And I know we disagree about a lot of things and including politics, including the application, issues about application of these ideas. So while politically, he was the closest to a consistent capitalism with capitalism within Israel, his dedication to religion ultimately undercut that. And I think, you know, I think that's sad. And I think I actually think he might have, he might have been more successful politically if he, if he had been a little less emphasis on the religious side and a little bit more emphasis on the capitalism and freedom side. Okay, I really don't know about this, but I will tell you that there is a profound disagreement between Judaism and Christianity regarding how, where to put yourself. In Judaism, we say that there is a very famous story in the Talmud that two people goes in the desert and there is only one bottle of water. So Christianity say you both drink and you both going to die. In Judaism, we say your life is prior to your friend's life. Okay, your life is prior. So I think it might resonate with some of your ideas, which leads me to a world that I want to say in, please. So I'll just say this, that in a desert with one bottle of water, I don't think ethics is relevant. Not that it's not relevant. It's an emergency situation. That's not what ethics is about. Ethics is really about how you live your life every single day and what you focus on in your day to day actions in life. Who gets the bottle in a desert is, you know, in a sense, who cares because, because that's not what life is about. Life is about the day to day living. And there's a profound difference between the way Objectivism views day to day living than an Orthodox Jew views day to day living and a Christian views day to day living. And I agree that there's a difference between Christianity and Judaism. I think there's quite a profound difference in ethics between Judaism and Christianity. I think in a sense, Judaism is healthier. But I still think there's a profound difference between Judaism and Objectivism in the focus and in the focus of how to live and where to look for guidance in how to live, which is important. You know, some people would argue that your morality can only be tested in extreme conditions because it's very easy or at least it is easier to be nice and to be, how you say it? Just to be nice when you are happy, when you are, when you are full, when you, when you slept enough, etc. Why is being nice the standard? Why does anybody care about being nice? Why is, why is being nice important? Right now, I'm not against being nice, but I don't see nicety as the standard of morality or the standard by which to measure. Again, this is part of the difference. Morality for Objectivism is not about how you treat other people. That's an aspect of reality, of morality, but that's not the essence of morality. In my view, morality and Objectivism is tested every single day. In a sense, every single moment that you're alive. And yes, it's tested when things are rough, but it's also tested when things are not rough because if when things are easy, you slack off. If when things are easy, you sit on the couch and watch television and numb your brain, then you're not being moral. That is immoral. That is the essence of immorality for Objectivism. So Objectivism is a demanding morality about how you live every minute of your life and what you do with your life in both tough situations, easy situations, and, and, and every kind of context. So and, and how you treat other people is just one aspect of that and that, but that again is true when everything is nice and comfortable, how you treat other people. So for example, if you're nice to your enemies, that's immoral. That's wrong. Even whether things are good or whether things are bad. Right? And it's good Christian. Yes, that's very Christian. It's turning the other cheek. When you to being good to your friends, you know, is something that's good no matter what the external, no matter what the conditions are. So, so it's, it's not, it's, it's not an issue of being tested by the standard of nice. Okay. So this is a core aspect, I think of Objectivism, which morality is not about how you treat other people. It's mainly about how you treat yourself and how you choose to live your life in a way that matters, that promotes you the best you can. So this is a very, very important issue. Now I'm going to say a word that relates to our discussion and please don't freak out. The word is altruism. Now you said yourself in a video that you uploaded that altruism is like a kryptonite to Objectivism. You once said that when you confronted Ben Shapiro, you said capitalism is not forced altruism altruism means and I quote, living for the other, putting other people values before yours. And in one of your other lecture, you said, my mother always told me to think of myself last, but she didn't mean it. Now, before I move on with my question, did I get it right? So altruism is putting other people lives and values above yours. Yes. Absolutely. Okay. Now I mean altruism is a term that was coined by a philosopher Augustine Comte, the French philosopher in the 19th century. And it means other ism. It means living your life for the sake of other people. Their happiness, their prosperity, their success, their values are what important. You don't matter. And to the extent that you enjoy helping other people and that's what motivates you, then it's not moral according to Comte and to some extent according to according to a man or Kant. So the the most influential philosophers in modern Western history have, have they are the ones who defined altruism. It's not my definition or Iran's definition. It's their definition in order to soften the blow in order to make altruism more palatable to people. People today consider altruism being nice, but that's not what it actually means. And it's not the psychological impact it actually has. It means not caring about self. It means being self less. That is not placing your interest as important in the interest of others above your interest. Okay. So now that we are having that, let me quote a Darwin. Okay. It's from the descent of men just a second. Oh, and it goes like this. If can you see it? Yes. Okay. If the one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members who were always ready to warn each other of danger to aid and defend each other. This tribe will succeed better and conquer the other. And then he rewrites selfish and contentious people will not cohere and without coherence, nothing can be affected. A tribe rich in the above quality was spread and be victorious over the other. Now, let me ask you this. You said that at the age of 16, you waited to jump a grenade for the sake of the Jewish people. This is what you said to in the Ben Shapiro interview. So maybe self interest is more efficient when viewing yourself as part of a bigger you or a collective. Maybe what is more efficient? Self interest. Self interest. It's a contradiction, right? If my self interest is myself. So how can myself, how can by denying myself for the sake of the group, my self interest be better? It can't be. That is a, that is a is not a, that is a contradiction. But look, we can quote Darwin. But look, Darwin was a great scientist. And I, you know, a huge respect and, and, and his theory of evolution is obviously revolutionary and true. But he is a scientist. The statement he just made is not science. The statement he just made is, is, is maybe anthropological, sociological, philosophical, but it's not evolutionary. It's not scientific. You disagree with me? What's that? Absolutely disagree. Absolutely disagree with him. So there's no question that the way we, the way we evolved, not evolved from a, from a biological perspective, but the way history played out is that human beings started out as tribes. But tribes are not good. Tribes are terrible as mechanisms for wealth creation and mechanisms for success of human beings. And indeed we were poor for a hundred thousand years. We didn't do anything. We were just, we were just wanderers and hunters and gatherers and didn't achieve much at all, all of human achievement, almost all of human achievement is what has happened since we discovered the eye, since we discovered the individual, since we broke away from the tribe, since we crushed the tribe, since we started respecting individuals that, you know, going back to Adam Smith, since we, since we discovered some sense from an economics perspective of division of labor, since we discovered the ability as individuals to think, which is, you know, really Greece, the great, the great culture of Greece, without the discovery of philosophy, without the discovery of thinking, thinking as an attribute of individual, without the discovery of heroes, you know, which, which again comes out of kind of Greek philosophy is somewhat in, in, in Jewish mythology. That is, that is what makes us successful as human beings. Success comes once we get civilized. Tribes are not civilized. Tribes are barbaric. They're about violence. They're about the oppression of the individual. I mean, it stuns me, stuns me that in modern evolutionary psychology, which I think is, is, is, is primitive science, you know, science is too good for it, that evolutionary psychology somehow attributes this grandeur to tribalism, to the tribe. Thank God in a, in a, in a, in a metaphoric sense, not in a real sense because you know I'm an atheist that we, we, we're out of that, but we're not tribes anymore, that we, we're individuals now and we have a division of labor society in which we have cohesion and what creates that cohesion. What creates that cohesion is not tribalism. What creates the cohesion is self-interest. What creates the cohesion is trade is the fact that we have a relationship. The two of us have a relationship because it's beneficial to both of us because we're trading something because we're not interacting because we're forced to interact. We're not interacting because we share the same blood or the shame or the same heritage or the same, we're interacting because there's something in it for you and there's something in it for me and our interaction benefits both of us. There is nothing more beautiful. There is nothing more cohesive. There is nothing more idealistic than that and the ideal here is not Israel. It is America. The beauty of America is that it wasn't founded on a tribal principle. It wasn't founded on a genetic principle. It wasn't founded on some collectivistic principle. It was founded on individualistic principle and as a consequence, people came from all kind of cultures, all kinds of places in the world and yes, some of them maintained some of their tribalism for a while and to some extent it still exists. But for the most part, the principle of America was shed your tribalism, shed your genetic origin in that sense and join the melting pot. And the melting pot makes us into what? Makes us into individuals united by an idea. An idea is freedom. The idea is individualism. The idea is we trade the way we interact with one another's trade and that created the most successful human society in all of human history. And so I don't look back to try to understand human beings, look back at the barbaric period in which we were tribal. I look to see, to learn about human beings, I look to see at the peaks of civilization. I look at Greece. I look at Rome. I look at the Enlightenment. I look at America. I look at the Industrial Revolution. That's where I want to learn about human beings because that's when human beings were at their best. When they were tribal, they were at their worst. So let's move to America because Milton Friedman, okay? Milton Friedman is not Darwin. It's not evolutionary psychology. It's white and white then. So, Milton Friedman says when he speaks about why inheritance tax. How do you say it? In inheritance tax? When you got money after inheritance tax, when he speaks about why inheritance tax is so bad, he says, and I quote, that we usually treat people in the US as individuals, but the basic unit in the US is a family. It's not the individual. And if you cannot save for your children, you won't work. So my question to you is, how does your philosophy apply to the concept of family? Is family also just give and take the trade of I want something for you and you want something for me? So first, let me say that Milton Friedman should have stuck to economics and not to philosophy. Again, it's the same thing I said about Darwin. That was a great scientist. Doesn't make him a geary commentator on political philosophy or on human social or cultural evolution. And Milton Friedman, it is absolutely not true that we save. I'm not working hard right now so that my kids can inherit my money. That is bizarre. I don't think Bill Gates does that. I don't think any entrepreneur in America goes out and works his butt off and thinks about these entrepreneurs who are actually going to give away 90% of their money. So the extra dollar they make is not so they can leave to their family. Their family is already taken care of. That was the first billion, right? But all the rest of the billions, they're doing it for themselves. It's a measure of their success. So, you know, with all due respect to Milton Friedman who is a genius and a great economist, he gets this completely and utterly wrong. I work hard so that I can live the best I can live. I said I can help my children when they need my help. But hopefully I don't have to leave them anything because they've done well enough for themselves that I don't have to leave them a dime. But the thing... You're a true artist's children, so it's very hard. I will see. But the thing about the thing about the thing about the inheritance tax is that it's a violation of my right to my money, right? If I accumulate money over my life, who are you to take it from me? Whether before, while I'm alive or dead, it's my money. For all UK, I could burn it. I could burn it the day before I die. So, it's a property rights issue. It's not a family issue. Now, let's get to family. Oh. Yeah, family is all about love. It's all about love. And love is a selfish, the most selfish emotion. Love is about how my wife makes me feel. And if she loves me, it's how I make her feel. And in a sense, there's a constant trade there because when she stops making me feel positive, better, then I stop loving her, then I think family breaks up. Family is not healthy when love goes away. So, family is about love, and it's about that relationship. It's also about need, no? No. It's not about need. No, I mean, we'll get the kids in a minute. But certainly between adults, it's not about need. It's about the opposite. It's really about, it's about positive values. It's about support. Now, sure, when things are bad, that love generates support. But it's not, you know, it's not needy. Needy relationships are really, really bad. Mr. Friedman is an economist. And Darwin is a scientist. But Jordan Peterson is a psychologist. Okay? And we say... And all of them have screwed up the views in the world. I don't want to say about Darwin because I don't know enough about Darwin. But certainly, Jordan Peterson. Remember Jordan Peterson's most important statement. Jordan Peterson says, life is about suffering. Life is about pain. I mean, that's it for me, right? Once you start with that, you've lost me. Because that's not what life is about. Now, it's true that Jordan Peterson, because he's a psychiatrist, a psychologist, that is what he experiences with his clients. But remember, it's clients of people who are messed up, who are not healthy. And yes, for unhealthy people, life is about pain. But the whole point of health, psychological health, is that life is about the potential for happiness. Jordan Peterson says, you cannot achieve happiness. Happiness just happens. I disagree fundamentally with him on that. So my approach in Jordan Peterson's approach, again, is fundamentally different. My approach in Milton Friedman's approach, outside of economics, and even in economics, is fundamentally different. My approach with Adam Smith is fundamentally different. My approach in Darwin, when it comes outside of biology, is fundamentally different. Einrand, and I can't emphasize this enough, was a revolutionary philosopher. She challenges all of these people on their fundamental beliefs. And my disagreements with Peterson are metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, and political. He's not a capitalist, right? Jordan Peterson is not a capitalist. He's not a free market guy. For example, an issue of inequality is for redistribution of wealth. I don't know, but just a second. It's not about Jordan Peterson. It's just about you because you said that, you know, men and the women, husband and wife is all about love and it's a trade-off. Okay, but what about kids? Because I think that you kind of lost me there because we think and we feel that our relationship with our children has some other level. I won't say it's transcendent, but other level above just the trade of, I am now, there is something else. Well, but that's interesting because there are many parents who don't love their children. There are many parents who don't have that so-called transcendental experience. So it's not wired into us. So there's nothing about having children that creates some unique experience. It's when you choose to have children for the right reason and you experience something from their child. I know parents, good parents, good people who can't relate to their children when they're babies. When they're babies, they're just, they're there and they love them. Yeah, they can't, I love babies. I fall apart when I see babies, right? There's something about that experience that I really, really love. I enjoy other people's babies too, by the way, not just mine, right? Other people's babies I fall over. So I love that phase in a human development and to see them kind of, you know, there's a lot. I mean, that's a whole different conversation. But so I think having children is about values. It's again about love. It's about the response to values. And first of all, I think having children should be a choice. I don't think everybody should have children. There are lots of people that shouldn't. There are lots of people who don't respond well to children like children that ultimately will treat their children badly and they shouldn't have children. You need the permit from the government to have children. Well, it's a moral question. Again, morality is not about the government. Morality is about the choices you make in your own life. There's some people who choose not to have children. I think that's a completely legitimate choice. Again, when I say shouldn't, it doesn't mean that I should dictate to them. When I say shouldn't, it's they should use their reason to decide, but they should, they should really think about their values and think about where the children fit in. And I care about children and I don't want the children to be abused or neglected or treated badly by parents who don't really love them. So first it's a choice you make and it's a choice you make. And I think, I think too many people have children when they're too young so that they're too immature to make the choice about having children. I think it needs to be a mature choice. It has to be something you really need to think about. It's not a commandment that you have to, it shouldn't be a commandment that you have to follow. And it's not the purpose of sex. The purpose of sex is joy and pleasure. It's not a byproduct of sex. This is what... It's not the purpose of sex. It's a byproduct obviously, but it's not the purpose of it. The purpose of sex is that connection with your partner and the happiness that that generates. So children should be something that you choose and that you embrace and you also understand and this is really important that choosing to have children is a massive commitment. So it's like signing a contract, right? I mean, I don't know if you're in business or not, but you sign a contract and you go into a deal and it's a long-term contract. You're signing a contract for 10 years. You're gonna do this thing. You can't back out. You signed a contract. You have to do it. You have to do the best that you can do. And that's why before you sign a long-term contract be careful. Really think about it. Having children is an 18-year contract. It's a contract to take care of this child for 18 years to do what's necessary to make this child the best that you could do even if you change your mind, even if you regret it, even if you land up not loving it. So I don't think... Marriage is also a contract and you see many divorces, but you don't see many parents divorce from their children. There is something profoundly different. There's something profoundly different. You're right. The difference with a child is that the child has no say in it. That is, with a wife, it's a mutual contract. With a child, you bring the child into the world. The child never asked to be brought into the world. So it's a one-sided contract. You have responsibility to the child. The child has no responsibility to you. This is one of my disagreements with one of the Ten Commandments. I don't think you should necessarily honor your mother and father. It depends. And your other than father didn't ask you to be brought into your world. Commandment should be, as a parent, honor your child. That should be the commandment because you chose. I mean, there shouldn't be commandments, but you chose to bring a child into the world. You have a responsibility to that child that doesn't go the other way. Now, hopefully, and this doesn't always happen, but hopefully, that responsibility turns into a mutually beneficial, loving relationship. That is a trade. It's absolutely a trade. Now, when I got huge pleasure from my children and they benefited me enormously, and my love for them ultimately is conditional. Ultimately, it's not unconditional love. It's conditional, particularly as they become adults. I myself also don't believe in unconditional love because if you love your child unconditionally, no matter what he does, it means that he's not important because what he does means nothing to you. So love must be conditional. But I would say that even if you don't love or like your child, you are still obliged to him. I, as a religious person, say that your child is still obliged to you. So now, we are having this conversation in 2020. And I think that for a long time now, it will be very hard to deny that in every objective metric, capitalism won. In every objective metric, capitalism won. However, many people in Israel and in the US and in Europe still don't see it as a moral system. Yes, it's selfish, but it works. Okay, just like you quoted the disproportionately cited line from Adam Smith, it's not from the relevance of the butcher, just from their self-interest. Now, you did a great job on this very subject giving a state that this is morally. So how can selfishness can be morally good? Well, I think that's a funny statement because I think the only moral good is in a sense selfishness. That is what else is there? You have a life and as a human being, you fundamental, the fundamental choice that every human being faces is the choice of to survive or not to survive, to exist or not to exist. In other words, to live or not to live. And the fundamental question morality asks facing is once you choose to live and you don't have to choose to live, many people or some people choose to die. But once you choose to live, the fundamental question that human beings face is how should I live? How do I survive? The difference between human beings and other animals is that we have free will, that we have choices and that we do not have it programmed into us how to survive. Animals know what to do. They know how to find food. They know how to mate. They know how to take care of their kids. They know all of that automatically. We don't. We have to learn it all. We have to figure it out. So once you choose to survive, the purpose, once you choose to live, the purpose of morality is to scientifically figure out how you should live. What is morality? Morality is a code of values to guide your life in the most important decisions. So why die on the couch is not accepted morally according to Einwand. If this is what my decision, so why lie on the couch and watching Netflix all day is not morally accepted? So because decisions are not the standard. It's your survival. So let's take lying on the couch. Lying on the couch is not a means of survival. It's not a way to live. And given that you're a human being, given your capacity for joy, given your capacity for reason, given your capacity for creation and productiveness, lying on the couch is now granted once in a while, lying on the couch, watching Netflix is fine. Like relaxation and rest is a good thing. But as a method of living is not living. It's a method of dying. It's a method of destruction because you're not using your mind. You're not being productive. You're not creating. You're not building. You're not making. You're not doing anything that is advancing your life. And indeed, people who live on the couches are what? We all know this. They're miserable, pathetic human beings. They live horrible lives. They're not. I don't know anybody who's ever been happy. Lying on a couch, watching Netflix or lying on a couch, drinking alcohol or doing anything to to subvert what I think is what I think human life requires. Human life requires more than anything else. You look at every human value out there, every material value, but also at the end of the day, every spiritual value, all of them require one thing. And that is what makes us human. And what makes us human in our thumbs, it is our ability to think it. It's our ability to reason. So reason using our mind is the number one value. It is the way in which we as animals, we as animals survive, thrive and pursue happiness. And to the extent that you negate your reason, you subvert it, you undercut it, or you just shut it down by being a couch potato. To that extent, you're immoral. You're going against your own life. So, Yaron, I think that this, what you just said leads to the one million dollar question, which is what happens if your logic and my logic get us to different paths. So I want to emphasize this question because history is proven. I think that relying solely on reason without the context of tradition and ancient wisdom can sometimes cause great harm. And I will give you a few examples. Now, logic itself could lead and actually lead to the eugenic movement in the U.S., not in Nazi Germany, in the U.S. So it's not in our self-interest to allow given birth to the morons, to the handicapped, and to the imbeciles. And let's say, and this is a great example, that Elon Musk needs and helped implant. I would argue that it will be in the U.S. self-interest to move into the top of the waiting list. Would you agree? I don't agree there should be a waiting list. I don't agree the U.S. has any view on this. I don't know who the U.S. is, who represents the U.S. Is it okay for them to kill me to save Elon Musk? I mean, that's the logic that you're using, right? Since Elon Musk is such a genius, it's in the U.S.'s interest to kill me, take my heart and give it to Elon Musk. Now, that is absurd, right? That is absurd and it's wrong because it uses some kind of utilitarian metric to determine this. So, no, I don't think any of what you said was right. I don't think logic led to eugenics. I don't think reason leads to any of the kind of secular movements that are always blamed on abandoning religion from communism to fascism to so on. I think all of those movements are fundamentally religious movements, they're fundamentally mystical movements, and they're fundamentally rejection of reason. All you have to do is read Marx or read Lenin or read Hitler to see that they are mystics, that they are not men of reason, and they don't claim to be men of reasons. You know, Hitler's whole thing is about the spirit of the Aryan nation, and the mystical, you know, forget the word of the fatherland and the Aryan race, and there's a mystical power to it. And if you read Marx at the end of the day, particularly when he's transitioning from the dictatorship of the Poletarian to his utopian communism in the end, it's all about the mystical knowledge of the Poletarian, it's all about the things just happen, and it's all about religion. So if religion is the negation of reason and the adoption of faith as one's primary means of knowledge, if it's religion is about revelation, then socialism and fascism are religious, fundamentally deeply rooted religious movements. But the idea that they're grounded or that eugenics is grounded on reason, all they had to do, so you brought up the idea of we don't want... The handicaptons and the moron. Yeah, I mean the fact is that that is not anybody else's choice to make, that is the we is collectivistic, the we is dictatorial, the we is anti-reason and anti-individualism. Reason is an attribute to the individual, what matters is my interest. Now, I might not want a moron, and I might choose to have an abortion if my child is going to be a moron, and that is completely legitimate for you to decide for me what I have and what I don't have. That is irrational, that is anti-reason and that is immoral. And for the United States, whoever the hell that is, to decide where to put Elon Musk in some list of heart, that is absurd. There should be a market for hearts just like there's a market for everything else. And you know, it should be up to hospitals, it should be up to doctors, and it should be up to a marketplace, who knows how that develops in capitalism, to decide who gets the next heart. It should not be the decision of a politician, we should not vote on it, and it should not be some arbitrary utilitarian mechanism to determine it. Now, I knew that you're going to say exactly that, because I read you in the very... I've said it many, many times, this isn't the term I've said it. It's a very Shapiro, but I think that you are not fair. And let me tell you why, because you said, and I totally agree, that Hitler was not rational, he was... his passion was derived from mystical forces. I truly believe, and I think Marx as well, but those people, or Marx for sure, and even Kant, came out from the Enlightenment. The French Revolution, now I know what you're going to say, that Kant is anti-Enlightenment. I know, but just a second, those people came from the Enlightenment. The French Revolutioners, they saw himself as acting according to reason. Now you, standing in 2020, say, no, he wasn't acting recently, because ABC. But he thought that he applied reason or Enlightenment principle for the French Revolution. So it's not fair. No, it's completely fair. Look, the fact that somebody says that he does something for a certain reason is not above judgment. You can judge them. Somebody does something horrible in the name of Judaism. You can legitimately say, no, no, no, his interpretation of Judaism is completely wrong. That is not what Judaism advocates. And you, you know, you might be right, you might be wrong, but you have a legitimate claim. If somebody says something in the name of reason, and if I can logically show the no, it's not reasonable what you did. What you did is not based on reason. And indeed, during that period in France, I mean, it's... Look, the two forces by the time the French Revolution happens, the two combating forces within the intelligentsia in France, right? And this is simple history, right? There is the Enlightenment forces, which are primarily Diderot and the Encyclopedias and Voltaire. And then there's Rousseau. Now, Rousseau is a mystic. He is not an Enlightenment force. He's an anti-Enlightenment force. Rousseau is anti-Enlightenment, but calling Kant anti-Enlightenment is one step forward. But Kant himself admits that his whole purpose is to undermine the Enlightenment's defense of reason and rejection of faith. The whole point of what he's doing is to save faith from reason. He says that into introduction to... Yeah, I know, I know. But Kant is not Rousseau. Let's take the French Revolution because you brought up the French Revolution. The French Revolution is inspired by Rousseau explicitly. Now, the fact that at the time they chose, I think consciously, not to separate, not to see the difference between Rousseau and Voltaire, between Rousseau and the Encyclopedias, is something I condemn and something you should condemn and something everybody should condemn. They lied. They lied about the Enlightenment. They misinterpreted the Enlightenment on purpose for their own power-grabbing purposes. They adopted Rousseau and pretended to be Voltarians, if you will, right? They pretended to be. That is their lying and cheating and we shouldn't embrace their falsehood. Now, Kant, the whole thing that Kant does, his whole methodology, is to make reason impotent. The whole project of the Enlightenment from Newton, in a sense, the first think of the Enlightenment on, is to celebrate reason and show its efficaciousness in reality. The whole point of Kant is to undermine that. So, of course, he's an anti-Enlightenment because his whole purpose is to say reason does not comprehend reality as it is. It does not tell us about reality as it is. It's all made up in a sense by a consciousness. It's all filtered through and what we see is not reality. That is the opposite of what Newton, Locke, and the rest of the Enlightenment philosophers are trying. The whole project is undermined by Kant. The only Enlightenment philosopher, post-Enlightenment, is Ayn Rand. She is the one who comes to the defense of reason, becomes the defense of the two principles of Enlightenment. Reason and individualism. Now, think about Kant's morality. Kant undermines happiness. Your goal in life is not to be happy. Indeed, if you seek happiness, it's immoral. That's anti-Enlightenment. Your moral goal is to do the right action out of that being right, not because you are making fun of it or enjoying it. Yes, and that is exactly the anti-Enlightenment mentality. So, Kant is the most anti-Enlightenment philosopher of all. And, of course, Ayn Rand, again, celebrates happiness. So, if you think about the Declaration of Independence as representing the Enlightenment, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that is Enlightenment thinking. Kant rejects that idea, the pursuit of happiness as a moral goal. Ayn Rand is the first philosopher of post-Enlightenment to celebrate it and to ground it in a proper philosophy. Okay, so let me ask you two questions regarding what you just said. One, who is a supreme judge? Because you said, just a second, Rousseau is anti-Enlightenment, or Rousseau is anti-reason, Voltaire is pro-reason, but Voltaire's view on the Jews were horrible. So, how do you decide which logic should rule? My logic? So, if you don't make Voltaire a god, in the sense, if there are flaws in Voltaire, you point out the flaws. You accept what's good and you reject what's bad. And that is true of any thinker. Your purpose in life should not be to follow commandments, to follow a text. Your purpose in life is to discover the truth. And it's up to you. It's not up to me. It's not up to anybody. You have to decide what you take as true from Voltaire, what you take as true from Rousseau if there's anything, what you take up true in interpreting history. You read different sources and you try to figure it out. Now, what is the truth? The truth is the truth. It's what really happened. And we're going to argue and disagree. And hopefully, if we're both basing our arguments on reason, I will either convince you if I'm right that I'm right because here's the logic of it. But we have to have a standard. And the standard is logic. The standard is fact. The standard is reality. That has to be the standard. Now, who gets to decide whether you should be a couch potato or whether you should be an active, productive, energetic liver? You get to decide. But you get to judge me and say, this is not a morally life. Of course. Of course I get to judge you. Why not? I get to judge everything. It's me. It's my mind. What am I going to say? I don't know. I don't care. But I do care. I care about human life and when I see it wasted, I find that sad. So of course I get to judge. But that judgment doesn't turn into me forcing you off the couch. It doesn't turn into force. So my judgment is in order to live, you have to judge. Again, Judaism is good at this, right? In order to live, you have to judge. That's part of life. You have to judge what are actions that are good. What are actions are bad? Who is a positive force in my life? Who is a negative force in my life? Living is judging. It's an essential part of life. So, you know, should I judge you? And if you're confident in your couch potato life, tell me to go to hell and continue it. But the fact is that if you're a real couch potato, you know. Of course you know that it's not appropriate. You don't know what I know. It seems like you cannot be and you cannot run an objective and objective is society, only objective is individuals. So, and you'll disagree about certain things. But the fact is that couch potatoes absolutely know. I mean, you mentioned, you mentioned Jordan Peterson as an authority in psychology. How does he know anything? Because he talks to people because he observes them. Because he knows something about human nature and he knows about something about human life. So do I. Okay, so let me ask you. And when I see couch potatoes, they're miserable, pathetic human beings. That's all I need to know. Okay. They know they're miserable and pathetic. That's why they go to get therapy from Jordan Peterson. Okay. Because they know they need a psychologist. They know they need help. I don't think I'm going to recommend you as a psychologist to any one of my friends. But nevertheless. Well, it's their past. My last published book in Hebrew called intelligence, the unpleasant truth. And let's say that you are right. Let's say that I agree with everything that you just said. And logic is the ultimate tool that we have to navigate the world. Okay, let's say what about people who lack the skill? Now we have approximately 15% of people with IQ score of 85 and below. According to the Wonder League, there are almost no job that they can fulfill in our technology-driven society. What do you think as an objectivist, we can do with people who lack this attribute of logic? So first, I don't think anybody lacks the attribute of logic. IQ and logic are not correlated. I know people with very high IQ that have no ability to think logically and are wasted away their lives. And I know people with very low IQ that live fantastic lives and use logic all the time. Logic is not a question of the horsepower you have in your mind. It's a question of whether you engage in a particular process in activating that horsepower. So I know lots of people who overachieve their IQ and lots of people who want to achieve their IQ depending on how they use the mind. And logic is one aspect of reason. Many people don't use reason even when they have the capability to. So everybody has the capacity to think logically unless you're really, again, mentally retarded, you know, really, and that's a very tiny fraction. So what, no, but 7%, what are we going to do with this 7%? Nonsense. There's no 7% who can't use logic. There's a fraction of 1%, less than 1%, way less than 1%. There's 7% with a low IQ. And I've heard Jordan Peterson talk about this. So this is, you know, so I'm sitting one day in a skyscraper in Chicago talking to somebody, looking out one of the windows and across the space, I see another skyscraper. And that skyscraper I see, you know, on the 50th floor, I see this platform with two guys standing on the platform cleaning windows. And I'm thinking, you couldn't pay me a million dollars, 10 million dollars to do their job. And their IQ might be 75, 85. And they're making a living. Yeah, yeah, to wash windows, absolutely. They're making a living. They're doing it well. They're getting paid well, by the way, because very few people are willing to go up there and do it. And they're doing fine. And it's horrific for us who might have IQs that are higher to look down on people like that and pretend that they don't have jobs. There are plenty of jobs for them. Indeed, there's no correlation between IQ and unemployment as far as I can tell. There's a lot of correlation between unemployment and laziness, unemployment and unwillingness to get off your butt and go find a job where it is. And there's a lot of correlation between unemployment and socialism and welfare statism and so on. But this is, of course, but let me just say because I just wrote the book, you don't find any jobs for people of IQ 80 and less. In fact, the U.S. military... This began a fallacy. So I served in the Israeli military. I had plenty of people in the Israeli military had IQ of 80 or less and did fine. But the U.S. military is not going to hire you if you have an IQ of 83 and below. Not my standard for anything as the U.S. military. It's not my standard. It's a volunteer army that has the ability to exclude certain people, but it's just not true. And it's just not true. The people with an IQ of 83 or less don't think logically and can't work. Most of them can, almost all of them can. It's just a matter of work that you and I wouldn't want to do. And they will do it and they get paid for it and they can have the self-esteem and they can have the confidence to live happy lives to dismiss 10% of the human population for not is going back to this kind of eugenics thinking. And I think it's very bad of Jordan Peterson to popularize this view. I don't think it's healthy and I think the focus and obsession with IQ, generally, is a very unhealthy thing. I think it's a very bad thing because, again, I don't think it's how much horsepower you have. Even if IQ measured horsepower and I don't think it does because it's statistically a weird measure. But it really is what you do with the mind that you have. And I am much more concerned about people who have a mind who don't use it rather than people who have low IQ because I know terrific people, low IQ and I know horrible people with high IQ. Listen, I've waited almost one hour to say the sentence. So let's agree to disagree. So I'm going to just two last questions, okay? And one, there is a wonderful, just wonderful lecture that you gave about the connection between anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism. And I watched this lecture twice because it's wonderful and we will link this lecture below. Now, we know for mysteries that the most capitalist countries were the least anti-Semite. Now, could you please elaborate on this important subject and how does this fact coexist with another fact that most Jewish Americans are Democrats? Well, and I'd say most Jewish Israelis are leftists. So left of center on economics, no, but economics, yes. But maybe not on policy, but economics, most Israelis are left of center and the Likud is left of center, right, on economics. But if the Likud is left to center, so you can say that most economics are left. I mean, we've been at any hour for the last 15 years as being left of center. I mean, maybe when he was finance minister a long, long time ago, he was right of center, but over the last 15 years, he's been left of center. That's just the reality. If you consider the currently Likud is left to center, so you're absolutely right. Let me, so anti-Semitism and capitalism, the fundamental foundation of capitalism, even if you're not an objectivist, there's always been and certainly in America has always been individualism. The treating of an individual as an individual and the leaving of an individual to live his life as he see fits and respect for that. And treating him from an economic perspective based on what he produces. Not based on where he comes from, not based on, but on his ability. And there's always been a respect, capitalism engenders a respect for ability, for productive ability, for thinking, for producing, for building, for creating. And there's been a certain attitude of, I don't care where you come from, right? And now it's not instantaneous. There was certainly anti-Semitism in America and there's certainly anti-Irish in America and certainly anti-Black in America, which really hoods America, but generally speaking, there's an attitude of you are who you are as an individual and I will treat you as such as a traitor and I don't care what tribe you belong to. So capitalism is inherently anti-tribal because it's inherently individualistic. Socialism is inherently tribal. It's inherently about the group. And then the question is, how do we comprise the group and what do we do about people who don't want to be part of our group? And the way I start my lecture on anti-Semitism and anti-capitalism is by reading a quote from Karl Marx who was Jewish technically, but was a real anti-Semite. But the thing he hated about the Jews was their individualism, was their capitalism, was in his words, their selfishness. The fact that they wouldn't join the proletarian masses, the fact that they wouldn't embrace the anonymity of socialism and that to me is a virtue of Jews, that Jews have historically been pretty individualistic and pursued excellence and certainly in the 19th century during while Marx was writing and success and prosperity and individuation and difference and they stay different. And that offended Marx. Marx wants everybody to merge into this great collective, this great proletarian nothingness. And until you're willing to subvert self, you're not going to be part of it. And I think anti-Semites latch on to the fact that Jews are different. Anti-Semites latch on to the fact that Jews are successful. Historically, and I wrote an essay on this, historically, Jews were hated by Christians to a large extent because they were the moneylenders. And there's a reason why Jews are the moneylenders because the Old Testament does not prohibit usury. And they interpret your brother as your brother and Christianity say your brother with the entire humanity. So the Jews are universal. And so Jews were allowed, according to the interpretation of the Old Testament, they were allowed to charge usury, which is interest really, just interest on money, and Christians were not. And the Christians had to go to the Jews to borrow money because we know that interest loans are an essential part of a growing economy. So even in the Middle Ages, if you wanted to grow a business, if you wanted to do anything, you needed money, you needed capital, and you went to the Jews to get it. And a lot of the hatred of Jews came from that. Shilok. Yeah, Shilok in the merchant of Venice is a classic example of that. And a beautiful play, by the way, so I encourage everybody to read it because you learn a lot about kind of this anti-Semitism but the hatred of usury that is expressed by the Christian moneylender who says, I don't charge interest. I base, this goes back to something you said earlier, I base whether I give somebody a loan on need, not on profit motive. So if somebody needs my money, I give it to them and I don't try to make money off of that. That's Christianity. And the Jews said, no, I'm going to make money off of this. This is my profession. And the Jew is right and the Christian is wrong here. So this idea of anti-Semitism, money, profit motive, capitalism, self-interest, being different, are all connected. And you always accuse the bankers. You said that in the 2008 crisis, they were coming for the bankers and the bankers were the Jews. Bankers, to a large extent, for a long, long time, have been codeword for Jews. I mean, if you think to this day, a lot of the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and everything about the Rockefellers and about the European bankers of the 19th century who manipulated a lot of the anti-capitalist mentality on the right is focused on capitalism as pro-Jewish. It's pro-bankers and the bankers are Jewish. And I think there's an undercurrent of anti-Semitism on the right that is connected to bankers. But it's also on the left. On the left, it's broader than bankers. So how come most American Jewish are Democrats? Are anti-capitalists? But that's a different, I think that's a whole different question. I don't think Democrats are anti-Semitic, right? So its socialism has been linked to anti-Semitism, but so has fascism and so has the right. So I think people on the right collectivism and on the left collectivism both tend to be anti-Semitic. Collectivism leads to anti-Semitism. And to some extent, you know, Jews are collectivists and there's a certain self-hatred, right? There's a certain self-hatred among Jews and certainly among American Jews. And to some extent among some Israeli Jews, there's a certain self-hatred which is a consequence of the fact that Jews have been successful and that they have been successful as individuals would lead to this guilt about their own success because of their altruism and collectivism which they have embraced primarily from Christianity and primarily from the secular sources, but to some extent from Judaism itself. So they are self-hating because of their own collectivism. And I think in addition to that, one of the things that makes Jews unique is they tend to be intellectual. They tend to take ideas seriously. Now, thank you so much. I would like to raise last question. And during this interview, we discussed Milton Friedman and Adam Smith and Darwin and Jordan Peterson and et cetera. And you said, I disagree with him and I disagree with him. Now, being objective is being pure about reason. And you said yourself that, let me quote, that I in one could create a philosophy only after the industrial revolution where we know that the use of reason and logic can make a great difference. So in other words, the context of time in the history of idea is crucial. So my last question to you, Yaron, is are there any issues that you, from your 2020 perspective, disagree with Einwand? What do you consider to be the weakest point she had in her theory? I mean, from a philosophical perspective, no, I don't disagree with anything in Einwand. Now, I'm not a philosopher, so I'm certainly not a technical philosopher and I don't have kind of the breadth of knowledge to go in there. But let me say this, I'm sure she was wrong about some stuff. I'm sure that a brilliant philosopher, 20 years from now, 40 years from now, 50 years from now, will say, look, this isn't exactly right. This is the right formulation. This is the right way to proceed. So I'm not, I would never claim that she was... Yeah, so that she was omniscient that she, everything she said, and she would never claim that, right? But based on my knowledge, based on my experience of life, based on what I have seen, I, you know, on the philosophy itself, I agree with her completely, and also on a lot of her kind of analysis of culture and a lot of sorts of politics, I agree with her. There might be some issues on interpretation of politics on specifics that I might disagree with, but nothing is dramatic. But, you know, that doesn't surprise me. I'm no way any of as smart as she was. And again, I'm not a philosopher. And I don't take her as being true on everything, on almost everything she says. She has to prove it to me, and I have to understand it in a first-hand way. I also, I mean, one of the things I discover about Nanran, because I truly think she was one of the great geniuses of human history, every time I read one of her essays, I discover things that I didn't realize before. That is, I am constantly a student and learning and expanding my knowledge. And I'm almost always blown away by observations that she made in the 60s and 70s that are so real right now where she, in a sense, says, these are the kind of the trends. And obviously, she didn't predict the details. She wasn't a prophet. But she, she certainly predicted the trends and the movements. And so there's nothing of importance. There's nothing certainly in philosophy that I disagree with. There's probably a lot in philosophy I don't understand yet. Okay. Wow. Yaron, this was a great interview and a great conversation. And I want to thank you deeply for your taking the time to answer and debating with me about those great ideas. And I think that, you know, regarding morality as first and foremost to look at yourself and how you treat your life and how you decide to live your life, not in the extreme, not in the Holocaust, not in the pandemic, but in your day-to-day life. I think that this is a profound thinking. So thank you so much. I will ask you one last question. Could you give me... This is one that I ask everyone that I having on the show. One, could you name a book that you have read in the last five years that blew your mind? And two, could you give me your number one productivity tip? Yeah. I mean, I would say for a book I loved Enlightenment Now by Stephen Pinker. I thought it was incredibly valuable. I don't agree with everything in it, but it had some really profound observations and identifications that I think incredibly valuable. Plus, a lot of statistics, just data. And I think one of the great tragedies of the modern world is people don't know a lot about history and about their own life and about the world around them. So just the data was fascinating in terms of how life has improved on planet Earth over the last 250 years. I mean, my productivity tip is because I don't do kind of the self-help, you know, make a list and make, do this and do that. My productivity tip is much more grand than that if you love what you do, love what you do. You're going to be more productive if you love doing it, if you love the process, if you love what is actually involved. Find things that you love doing and invest the time and the effort in those. You know, I've said this many, many times. You only live once. You got to make the most of every second and you're going to find that your mind functions better, that your energy is different. When you love something, it enhances your productivity in profound and deep ways and nothing can match that. Listen to things about loving. One thing that I can say for sure about you that you actually love and passionate about what you're doing. Yaron Brook, the host of the Yaron Brook show, the chairman of the Iron Rod Institute and the author of three books, including Equal is Unfair. Thank you so much for joining me today on the show. Thank you so much. This was great interview. I really appreciate it.