 I do have an opinion about what it means to be an objectivist, and I'll talk about why I'm even uncomfortable about that. And we can talk about what it means to live that as part of what we're going to talk about today. So this is not what I typically talk about, although it's always in my talks. It's everywhere. Every one of these shows has a little bit of this. The first one is objectivism, because I think it's important. Objectivism is the philosophy of Ayn Rand. There's a lot of confusion out there. Objectivism is not the truth. Objectivism is not the latest and greatest word on ideas inspired by Ayn Rand. Objectivism is not everything that is connected to Ayn Rand's ideas, Ayn Rand's philosophy. Objective is not my opinions about Ayn Rand, or my innovations about Ayn Rand, true or false. Objectivism is what Ayn Rand wrote. It's closed in that sense. It's a finite system of knowledge. And you can include, together with Ayn Rand, what Ayn Rand wrote, you can include some of the Leonard's material, Leonard Peacock's material, but even Leonard would acknowledge that not all of it. So primarily, we're talking about Opa, Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and as being part of the corpus that is Objectivism. It's a philosophy that Ayn Rand articulated. And whether it's true or not, you have to discover. You shouldn't enter the project convinced that she's right. You can't exit just with one of her books convinced that she's right as ... I mean, you might be ... think that she's right, but to be convinced, it takes a long time. Takes a lot of work. It's philosophy. It's not just pop, fill in the blank. It's real philosophy. So Ayn Rand's ideas of what she wrote, and just to preempt whatever questions, I mean, she might have been wrong. Nobody who is an Objectivist is going to argue that everything she said has to be true or always be true is like the Bible written in stone ... Well, the Bible is not written in stone, but the Ten Commandments are written in stone and always true and always valid. Nobody can ever question them. That's just not true or philosophy. New knowledge can be discovered. New ideas can come about. That turned out to be true. That can expand on, innovate, maybe even show something about some aspect of Ayn Rand's philosophy as untrue. But I would say somebody who is an Objectivist. Somebody is an Objectivist. A proper, you know, somebody who's legitimately an Objectivist. Somebody who has validated Ayn Rand's philosophy for himself that to him, her ideas are true. That he has not accepted it on faith or dogma, but has done it based on first-handed experience with the ideas, with the world, with reality, tested them, evaluated them, integrated them, judged them, and come to the conclusion that are basic ideas and not every idea, not everything she wrote, but that the basic ideas, the basic framework of the philosophy, the basic ideas within the philosophy are true, but that's not enough. The fact that acknowledging the truth is not enough. What really it means is integrating into your life and living it. Now what does that mean? First and foremost it means, more than anything it means, taking her morality seriously, taking her ethics seriously, taking it every thing about morality seriously. It's the one area of your life that is in your complete control. And of course that implies a certain approach to epistemology, but it doesn't mean you have to study epistemology and no epistemology, it just means the commitment to using reason, which is the ethics. So really it's about applying the ideas in your life, which primarily means applying them in your ethics, and that will shape your political views, but that's not the essential. The essential is how you live every day, whether you use your mind, whether you are a truth seeker, whether you are looking at reality and evaluating it. So being an objectivist means being committed to these ideas in your life, in how you live. Not just espousing them, not advocating for them, not arguing them, not being politically active around them, but taking the ethics, taking the morality and applying it to your life, not because it's dogma, not because you've accepted our faith, but because you are convinced, you have been convinced. And maybe you were convinced even before implicitly, but now you've made it explicit. In my case it wasn't, she convinced me that happiness should be the moral purpose of your life, and that Ayn Rand's ethics, the values and virtues that she articulated applied right is the only way to achieve that moral purpose, that is that you have dedicated your life to being a moral person in pursuit of your happiness. That is first and foremost to me, for me, what it would mean, what it means to be an objectivist. And indeed, I don't really care about whether people call themselves objectivists or not. What I care about is how people live, what kind of life they live, what kind of values they pursue, what kind of virtues they exhibit. To me what matters and what should matter to you is to live a good life, is to pursue happiness rationally. And if you do that, these are the values and virtues that you need to live by. And then the extent to which you then want to shape the world around you to make it possible for you to live the happiest life you can, how much you want to get involved, how much you want to think and engage in activism or politics or everything, that is to some extent optional. But the primary, the focus needs to be on understanding what these ideas have to do with your life and your happiness and how to live them, how to apply them, and what context. And consistently. But again, all of that needs to be done not because seven commandments, sorry, seven virtues are written in a book, but because you understand and you have internalized why honesty is necessary for happiness, why productiveness is necessary for flourishing, why independence. You cannot live successfully. You cannot survive as a human being unless you're independent. And each one of those requires real work. And I want to encourage you guys to do the work. Your happiness in my view depends on it. And doing the work does not mean listening to my podcast. I mean, I love that you listen. Please continue. And I think it contributes a lot. The work means a few things. First, it means studying the ideas. Understanding what you're getting into, if you find these ideas interesting, and if you find them intriguing, if you're inspired by Atlas Shrugged, if you're inspired by heroes, if you're inspired by what you've read by Ayn Rand, then you need to do the work to figure out how to apply these ideas to your own life. To understand what the morality actually means and how to do it. And again, in a first-handed way, and the work is not just a read. The work is to think. And thinking means integrating, connecting it to your own experiences, to your own observations, to looking around and seeing what's going on in the world, to what you know about history. And if you don't know a lot of history, study more history. I mean, that's just good advice for human beings generally. We need to know more about the past in order to understand the present and to understand how the future is going to evolve. To learn, study, think, integrate, observe, integrate, connect. And look, if you're going to study, then you should study primarily from the source. Start with Ayn Rand. I mean, start, there's so much Ayn Rand to read, there's so much of Ayn Rand that you could spend years just studying Ayn Rand, and you should. If you're serious about this, there's nothing to replicate the experience of reading Rand, reading the virtue of selfishness, the various essays, reading her other essay books. And then, you know, at the same time or after, sequentially, however you want to do it, read objectives of the philosophy of Ayn Rand by Lena Peacock because it integrates it all. It shows you the complete picture of what the philosophy looks like, how it's connected, what the hierarchy is. Again, not because you need to know that dogma, but because it is essential to know that at least in principle, not necessarily in detail, to be able to integrate the moral ideas into your life. You have to know something more about the epistemology and how the epistemology is connected to the ethics and know something about the nature of man. And again, no, you don't have to know it to the point where you have to teach it. Those of us who teach it need to know it to that level, and it's hard. But you need to know it enough so that you can use it. Think of a philosophy as something you should be using. Ethics is a guide, it's a tool, it's a map. It's a map to living your life. It's a map that in some sense you got from somebody else. But unless you color in the lines, unless you go over those lines and make them sharper, unless you understand every turn and every twist, the map is not going to be useful because it fades and it goes away unless you constantly recreate it. And that's the integrating, that's making the philosophy yours. So study, like any other field, you want to learn math, you have to study math, you want to learn physics, you have to go and read books on physics and take classes in physics. You want to study objectivism, read objectivism. There's nothing that replaces reading, go take classes in objectivism. The only place to take classes in objectivism is at the Einman Institute, or from Leonard Peacock in some of these old courses. But take it seriously. Take the idea seriously and see, even on the questions I see in the super chat, it's all about politics, screw politics. I mean, it's not going to change your life. I mean it will, but it's not, you don't have any control over it. So many people live unhappy lives, half fulfilled lives, half wasted lives, not because of Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton, but because of the ideas that they have, because of the choices they make about the life that they have chosen by default or purposefully to live. So the first focus you should have when you're coming to these ideas on is on you, on your living. When I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time, I was 16, the thing that struck me, I mean it certainly struck me that socialism was wrong and capitalism was right, that seemed kind of straightforward once I read Atlas Shrugged. But the thing that really changed my life, the thing that really brought meaning to my life and changed the whole projection of my life was not that. It was the realization that the moral purpose of my life was happiness, my happiness. It was the rejection of altruism, but it wasn't just the negation, it was the positive. That is the positive of living a good life and getting a clue. And the first time I read Atlas Shrugged all I had was a clue, kind of a hazy clue that that involved a whole ethical approach and a whole way to viewing the world and a whole, and I didn't know when I finished Atlas Shrugged how much I didn't know, how much I was still ignorant, to what extent I was still ignorant of the philosophy, but at least I understood that this meant I have to take my life seriously. That's the thing I got from Iron Man. And of course, I argued politics with everybody, because politics is relatively, I say relatively easy. It's much harder to argue ethics, certainly for me impossible to argue epistemology. I wouldn't know where to start. But certainly then I didn't know and I wouldn't have known then how to argue ethics. But it's the ethics that matters. And the politics doesn't matter, if you get tomorrow, if we get the best imaginable president, we get an objective as president. We elect him and he's popular support and you can do whatever the hell he wants. And you have not integrated egos into your life and you are not pursuing life enhancing values with passion and with focus. Then what difference does it make? Difference does it make who is, who's in power? You'll still be miserable. You'll still have a failed life. You still won't be successful. So anybody views, just commenting to a comment on the chat. If you have used a president as your master, you've got a perverted sense of your own life and perverted sense of politics. So you can imagine the best political system in the world. You can imagine the best culture in the world. And if you are not taking your life seriously, if you are not pursuing the right values, if you're not have a good understanding of what virtues, what actions you should take, and what differences it make, what differences politics make. And of course, if we have a terrible president, but you live your life to the fullest and you pursue your values to the best of your ability, integrate these ideas, you might not be able to live the best life possible because this president, this political system, the people around you willing to fear, but you will live a damn good life. And that's what it's about. It's not about the world. It's about you. So to me to take objectivism seriously is to take your own life seriously, to take your own happiness seriously, and therefore to devote your life, well, devote a portion of your life to studying these ideas, integrating them. And to the extent that it's not working, somebody says, what if you fail? What if? Well, there are two possibilities that you fail. One is that the ideas are bad or wrong. They just don't work because you're not achieving happiness. You're not achieving your own well-being. That's possible. I don't think that's right. They haven't failed for me, but yep, maybe I'm wrong. The other possibility is that you're not applying them right. The other possibility is there's a misunderstanding, a misintegration. Maybe there's a psychological issue. So there are a lot of issues that could prevent you applying these ideas as best that you can and still not getting the result that you want. But again, that's the work that you need to do of choosing your values, making sure that they are life enhancing values, making sure that they are the right values, making sure that they're in the right order of priority, and then pursuing them and achieving and gaining the rewards from that achievement. And if it's not working, fixing whatever is not working, fixing it. So the whole point is to live the best life that you can, constantly building yourself and how do you build yourself? You build yourself by the choice of values that you make. You build yourself by the purposes that you choose. That is who you are. You are your values. Your soul is the choices that you make. And your goal in life is to build a beautiful soul, a beautiful life, a happy life. So to me, that's much more important than what you call yourself. To me, that's what Objectivism should mean to every one of us. This idea that life is finite, every second you never get back, you got to live to the max and hear the tools, hear the tools that some genius has provided us that I can use if I understand them, if I integrate them properly. So and by the way, it's not easy, it's hard, and it takes time. And I know lots of people, hundreds of people, thousands of people who give up, who give up because it doesn't seem to work, because it takes time, it takes effort, and it takes real effort to shake kind of the altruistic premises that we all have. We're all raised in a particular culture and we're not independent on that culture. And you can't shake off all the premises you accepted as a kid and growing up and all the stuff that happened to you. You can't just shake that off all at once. It takes time and some people just give up. They don't attain the happiness immediately. They don't attend the expected results immediately. It's too challenging. It's too much conflict. It puts them up against the culture, puts them up against their friends, it puts them up against their family, and they walk away. And that's tragic for all of us. Fewer allies, fewer happy people in the world, fewer flourishing individuals. Not good. So I encourage all of you, those of you who haven't yet, and I know there are quite a few of you, read more Inrant, read, listen to Leonard Peacock, take Leonard's courses, you know all of them, all of them available now online, they're all available for free. Only one of you can study these things. Sign up to take courses at the Ironman Institute and to the extent that you think you need in order to enhance your life, study these ideas, but always remember the purpose. The purpose is your life. And when you attempt to take these ideas into the realm of politics, there are a few things that you need to remember. Objectivism is not a species of conservatism. It's not a conservative of objectivism. Objectivism is a philosophy that is radical in every dimension. Agree or disagree with it. It is not like anything else. It's arguments for capitalism are different than anybody else's arguments for capitalism. Different than libertarian arguments for capitalism. Different than conservative arguments for capitalism. Different than classical liberal arguments for capitalism. It's argument even defining individual rights. It's a completely different view of individual rights in deep meaningful ways than even the view of John Locke. Because Rand's view of the role of reason in human life is deeper, more substantial, more important, more meaningful than Locke's. So Locke couldn't have had a full understanding of individual rights because he didn't have a full understanding of the role of reason in human life. So as great as an achievement Locke says, Rand is not just a follower of Locke. Her argument about individual rights is not just a Lockeian argument. Rand is a radical. So when you think about her, particularly in politics, she's not a species of conservative, but she's not a species of classical liberal either. She rejects many of the ideas classical liberals held. So in that sense, quaf philosophy as a philosophy. We don't have many allies. And suddenly we don't have the same allies as we have, as we seem to have, let's say, in politics. Right? Seemingly, in politics we have, we're aligned with certain libertarians, right? Free market people. But philosophically, we might not be. Ethically, we might be completely opposite. So many libertarians, free market people are religious, for example, and abide by religious morality, which I consider morality of death and destruction, anti everything I believe in, everything I hold dear. And of course, many of those free market tiers are moral subjectivists and epistemological subjectivists. And most of those then become anarchists. And there's nothing, nothing similar about anarchism and objectivism. They're complete opposites because their philosophy is so different. He is a species of statism, of subjectivism, of the elevation of force above all things. So Rand is not just another, objectivism is not just another set of ideas within a particular well defined tradition. I mean, you can say she's Aristotelian in the sense that she held that Aristotle was the basis foundation for many of her ideas. She disagrees with Aristotle and a lot of very, very important things. So it is, it is the case that we are going to be outcast, separate, alone, philosophically, ideologically, politically, than everybody else out there in the culture. I mean, you can see that on my chat every time I do this. Even people who listen to me have no understanding, you know, have no clue and reject pretty much everything that I say and come to my chat to let me know that. We have an anarchist who is not a moral subjectivist. Okay, then you're just wrong. It could be that you're wrong about anarchy and you've just made a mistake and it could be wrong about your moral subjectivism. It could be that you are subjectivist and you don't even know it. I don't know. I don't know you. I haven't heard the arguments, but you're wrong. It's just a question of where you're wrong. Are you wrong with anarchy? Your morality is good, but you're wrong with anarchy. Or it could be that you're wrong with anarchy and you're wrong about your moral subjectivism. I don't know. That would have to be, that would have to be a philosophical analysis of your views, which I am not inclined to do right now. All right. So I've got a bunch of super chat questions. I'll get to those in a second. So this is the point. Think people should spend too much time figuring out who's an objectivist and who's not. I'm trying to point to who. He's an objectivist and she's not. I know lots of objectivists who I think live lives that are anti-objectivist. In a sense that they're objectivists, in a sense that they declare themselves to be objectivists. They studied all of Einstein's ideas. They claim to pursue the values and the virtues based on what is written in objectivism. And yet they live rotten lives and they behave in rotten ways. They live rotten lives because they behave in rotten ways. So somebody telling me they're objectivist means very little to me. I've met too many lousy people who happen to consider themselves objectivists. What matters to me is how you live. And it's not, you shouldn't care what matters to me. What matters to you should be how you live. I'll answer this question. Somebody says, is lying immoral always? No. And if you've read Objectivism, if you've read Ayn Rand, if you've listened to me, you know that. It's the case. So lying is not always immoral and the virtue of honesty is not about lying primarily. It's not the focus. So what's important is, again, not about the focus is not about the studying. The studying isn't necessary but not sufficient. What really matters to me and what should matter to you is how you live. Do you live a good life? Are you properly pursuing your values? Do you hold those virtues right? And the most important of the virtues, not the most important. The integrating virtue of all of them is pride. Do you have pride? And what I mean, what Ayn Rand means by pride is a commitment to being good, to being moral, to being consistent, to living the best life that you can live. That's what should matter to you. That's what matters to me. That's what to me matters in a human being. They call themselves an Objectivist. They don't call themselves an Objectivist. Matters are a lot less. Now, if somebody is going to teach Objectivism, then they have to know Objectivism. If somebody is going to teach Objectivism in the name of the Ayn Rand Institute, they need to know it and they need to live it and they need to believe it's true. But for somebody to be a good person, they just need to live the right life. And for somebody to claim to be an Objectivist, I wish there was a way to zap the people who claim to be an Objectivist who are not, who don't live it. What we need today, what I call the 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, whims 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, Brody. Using the super chat, and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you step forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity, go to uranbrookshow.com slash support or go to subscribestar.com uranbrookshow and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not sure when the next...