 Now, this is what Christian morality presents you with. You can dedicate yourself to God. You can be conventional, don't be curious, don't be passionate, don't be too sexual, don't be too ambitious, just be boring or you can be a hedonist of one form or another. And if you're hedonist or you pursue your passion, you pursue your love, you will die, you will suffer, you'll be miserable and you'll destroy the lives of all those around you. But that, of course, is the great false alternative. That is the alternative between hedonism and altruism and it's false. But in the 19th century, certainly in the 18th century, they didn't know it was false. They were struggling with it. They were debating it. They couldn't figure it out and even to this day, 99.9% of the people think that's the alternative in the end. Nothing wrong with pleasure. At the end, it's all about pleasure, properly in the right context. But pleasure is what builds the joy. You can't denounce pleasure. You can't reject pleasure and have joy and happiness. They go together. If you don't get pleasure from your relationships, if you don't get pleasure from your job, if you can't relax and get pleasure from the art that you see, or pleasure from, I don't know, just pleasure for the sake of pleasure sometimes. What's the point? So, but in the context of a life, but that life, you have to have the freedom to live it. You have to have a freedom to have a profession and to have a career and to pursue your interests. You have to have the freedom to fall in love and to be free to marry and not to rely on the wealth of your parents or the wealth of your cousins in order to live well, but to rely on your own ability and your own skills in order to build that life, in order to create that life. But again, if you're a woman in the 19th century, none of that is available to you. Never mind previous centuries. And if you're a man before the 19th century, none of that is available to you. So, feminism's response, at least original feminism, modern feminism, has become nutty. Originally, the women's liberation movements, the suffragettes, were a response to a situation which was unbearable to any woman with ambition, who sexuality was rejected, treated completely different than a man's sexuality, who ambition was rejected, her mind was rejected. And the culture she lived in was a culture that did not tolerate, did not facilitate her ability to live, live life, live as a human being. So the origins of feminism, women's liberation, are this really oppressive world, really oppressive world. Now, what leads to the mitigation of this oppression? What leads to it is capitalism. Capitalism, for the first time in human history, allows people to accumulate wealth based on merit, based on the use of their own mind, based on the work that they do, not based on family relationships, not based on stealing, not based on political connections, based on work, based on production, based on their own minds. And since women have minds and can reason, it suddenly opens up a world in which women can produce wealth and create wealth. Now, that we've seen more in the 20th century, and of course in the 21st century, but the beginnings of it in the 19th century and the realization of the possibility of it is in the 19th century. Open suddenly with the enlightenment, with the recognition of reason as man's means of survival, of reason as man's means of attaining knowledge, suddenly with the emphasis on the individual rather than family, rather than church, rather than on God, suddenly with the capitalism and the industrial revolution making evident the use of reason in producing wealth. It liberated all of us, all of us as individuals, men and women, from the drudgery of just being ordinary, from the drudgery of being told what to do and how to do it from the slavery of being a surf, from the slavery sense of family, of family commitments, of family relationships, of your family telling you who you could marry and how much money you would get and where you should live and how you should live and what your profession should be. All of that falls apart during the 19th century. It disintegrates. It's a period of massive upheaval, capitalism causes this massive upheaval. There's not surprise that you get both Marxism and conservatism on the other side as a response to capitalism. The conservatives are horrified by all these changes, by all this liberation, by sex, by the disintegration, if you will, of the extended family. And the Marxists are motivated by something very similar. They're horrified by this individualism, by people pursuing their own happiness. What about community? What about the poor? What about those people over there who are not achieving as much as you're achieving? Capitalism is a massive, huge disruptor of everything. And among others, it's a massive disruptor of the role of women in society. Because now it's not about strength, it's not about muscle, that what is going to determine what we can do, what we can do, what we can produce, what we can produce. For the first time in human history, production is not dependent on muscle, but on a brain. And women have a brain, so women can produce just like men. So the beauty of capitalism, the amazing revolution that capitalism has created, it is so tragic, it is so sad, it is so despicable that we don't learn that, that we don't know that. We know lots about socialism, we know lots about labor movements, we know lots about all these things that supposedly brought good things to the world. But what brought, essentially, what brought good into the world in the last 250 years is capitalist. What liberated, what liberated the slaves, what liberated women, and what liberated all of us, all of us as individuals to live, live in the kind of quality of life we have, live with the kind of freedom that we have, live with the kind of ability to go to opera that we have. That's a product of capitalist. Nobody knows it. Nobody seems to care about it. Nobody is defending it. They defend it using economics. But that's not the beauty of it. The beauty is the culture. The beauty is the freedom. The beauty is women's liberation. They believe women to pursue careers, free of family, free of society, free of authority, telling them what they can and cannot do. Go do what you can do. Fail, succeed, up to you. And you can't understand all these other movements. Again, conservatives, socialists, fascists, communists, without understanding how revolutionary capitalism was, how disruptive to the status quo capitalism is, how disruptive to everything that people understood about the world before capitalism, capitalism was, including the world of women. Today, a young man on would not have to face the kind of choices she faces. Nobody sends their daughters off to convents anymore. Thank God. Nobody denounces, oh, not nobody. I shouldn't say nobody. Some people still do. Denounces the energy, the passion, the curiosity that a young girl might have, or the sexuality that she might exhibit. It's what's proper is to teach, to educate on how to channel your curiosity, how to channel your sexuality, how to channel your interests. That's what's appropriate, but nobody ridicules them. Nobody condemns them. Nobody oppresses them. Again, nobody is a massive exaggeration. You know, being a girl in Iran today, or being a girl brought up by Hasidic Jews in New York, or being a girl in most Islamic cultures around the world, not a pleasant thing. But in the West, it is for the most part gone, or even in some Christian communities. Anyway, what we need today, what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins, or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism, and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist brought. Using the super chat, and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you stepped 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 Iranbrookshow.com slash support, or go to subscribestar.com, Iranbrookshow, and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. I'm not showing the next.