 the radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Book Show on this, what is it? It's Saturday, December 9th. We're well into December. This is a fantastic season. I hope you guys are having a great weekend and a great week. All right, so today we're going to talk about how to think about, how to create ultimately, but what is it going to look like to have a second renaissance? What needs to happen in our culture? What needs to happen in the world around us for us to live through or for our children to live through a second renaissance? What are the kind of requirements? And of course, there are a lot of ways to think about this problem. There's a lot of way to dice and slice it, and there are a lot of different approaches one could take. I'm going to focus on a few things today. I'm sure we'll keep going back to this issue. It is the issue of how do you change the world, and ultimately, how do you bring about a dramatic change? So let's walk through this. Let's see what it requires. And again, I'm going to take a slightly different perspective on this than maybe we have in the past. Let me also say, as we talk about this, that when I say a culture, when I talk about the culture, when I talk about things that have to happen in the culture, what does that even mean? And fundamentally, what that means is that the leadership of our society, the people in positions of communication, in positions of intellectual leadership, are starting to adopt whatever it is that we want. And through that, it's filtering out into society so that into many, many people, and they are starting to change. That is, these ideas, these attitudes, this perspective on the world that I'm going to talk about, is now being adopted by multitudes, by a lot of people. Whether they understand the source of it or not. I mean, how many people who've adopted status views of ever read Marx or no Marx, they might have heard the name, but they don't know Marx is inspiring it. I mean, how many of these people have even read The Funny Fathers? They have vague notion of who The Funny Fathers were, but they don't really know it. That's the whole point of the intellectuals. The intellectuals are taking these thinkers and translating into language and attitude that people in the culture in our world, in our society, have. So when I say cultural change, it's when these ideas are now starting to permeate throughout the people. And of course, you cannot change your culture. You cannot bring about cultural change as activists, as those of us who want to bring about cultural change, unless we first change ourselves. So whatever call to action we have with regard to the quote culture, we must first have it with regard to our own lives and our own attitudes and our own way of thinking. And we must live it in that sense. Culture is ultimately one mind at the time. It's one mind and one mind and one mind. And if you get enough of those, if you become, if enough of those people take these ideas seriously, then you get cultural change. I don't know what, I don't know how much is enough, how many people is enough. But at some point, the culture, the way people behave, the way people ultimately vote, the way people act, the way people live, significantly changes. And that represents, okay, the culture has changed now. But it's, it's, it's, it's lead by example, Jennifer, but it's also you are part of the culture. And, and it, you know, if we're going to add up to, I know you need 40 million people to behave in a particular way, we'll start with one, two, three, you got to start some way. All right, so let's, so that's one I wanted to say. The second thing I want to say is, what do we mean by renaissance? Well, renaissance is a, is a, you know, rebirth. It is a rebirth of civilization. It is a rebirth of a certain kind of ideas, a certain attitude towards the world. In the first renaissance was a rebirth very much of Greek ideas, Greek, you know, Greek, Greek sculpture, Greek arts, Greek philosophy, and a slow filtering of that art into the culture, which has then all kinds of implications, because now you're projecting a new and different view of man, a new, a different view of what is possible to man. And, and slowly, you know, ultimately the, the, the philosophy maybe catches up to it, not completely, but somewhat. And ultimately that changes the way people think about the world, and that changes their attitude, and that changes their behavior, and you get real cultural change. And by the time the Enlightenment, the philosophers start catching up to that, and they, they start the ideas. But the culture is already changing before the philosophers are caught up. You can get a lot of the way with, you know, even pre-enlightenment philosophy as, as you got in the Renaissance. You can't get all the way. You can't get to capitalism. You need the enlightenment for that. But you can get the prep work done for that. So, so I want to, so renaissance is a rebirth. It's a rebirth of ideas. It's a rebirth of a certain attitude, it's a rebirth of a certain focus on, on human flourishing and human life and, and human reason. We'll talk about that. So, the renaissance is a rebirth. Clearly, and I'm not going to spend any time on this, but clearly our culture is in decline. Clearly, the attitudes of people, the weak people live their lives as individuals, and, and the, the, our political life, our, our social life, our cultural life, our aesthetic life, artistic life, I think are almost all in decline. So, what needs, what we're looking for is a, is a rebirth that we discover of ideas that can set it on the right course. So, what, what is it going to take? What is it going to take? And here, what we all know, well, it takes philosophy and aim and objectivism. I want to talk about how that manifests itself rather than the specific philosophical ideas that have to take hold. I mean, we'll get to that. But first, what in people's attitudes, maybe even in the non-intellectuals attitudes, in the common people, out there's attitudes need to change. What needs to change for the culture to change, for the world to change for renaissance, for a rebirth of this dynamic and, and a positive view of, of life and man? Well, in, in, in a sense, what can we do to help that along, sort of just preaching philosophy, which I think is good for some people, but maybe not as effective for others? I think step one has to be an appreciation for the good, an appreciation for human life, for human prosperity, and most importantly, for human achievement, and an appreciation for beauty, for health, for wealth, for living a good, long life. You know, what, what the renaissance, the original renaissance really had going for them is a, is a discovery really, a discovery more than anything else, a beauty, of a projection of a beautiful world, of a projection of life is beautiful, man, woman is beautiful, the future is beautiful, man is an achiever. I mean, the first artists of the renaissance are painting beauty after centuries of ugliness, centuries of images of deformity, centuries of gargoyles, a rediscovery of grease, of its thinkers, a filtering in of Aquinas' respect for reason, changes people's attitude, and, and, and they're slowly looking for and willing to risk producing beauty, beautiful sculptures, beautiful paintings. They start producing a world as it could be. I mean, the world in the renaissance is still pretty bleak. It's pretty short, it's pretty miserable, it's pretty ugly, and yet the world that is projected in the paintings and the sculpture is magnificent, both in that much of it is, is positive and benevolent, but also in its achievement. Suddenly, paintings have three dimensionality and perspective and wow, and, and even the common person who doesn't understand the mathematics of perspective doesn't understand how you do it is amazed. Remember, there was no perspective in pre-renaissance art. Suddenly, the possibilities of human achievement open up, you know, and first and foremost, that open up throughout, through a seeking of beauty. And I think any renaissance must in a science start with human achievement, start with the good, start with the beautiful, start with what is possible. And, you know, when you take people in the dark, in a dark ages, in ugliness and grayness is everything, and suddenly you expose them to beauty, you change their life, you change their world, you expose them to heroism and commitment and integrity and everything that a Michelangelo's David represents, but even that I don't tell those, David, just the beauty, the exactness, the sensuality, life. Life becomes something you want to be, you want to live, you want to achieve. As we descend today into anger and depression and chaos and ugliness, ugliness, as we descend into grayness, I mean, Gogol is a pretty cool as compared to what our modern artists present to us, they basically present to us nothingness, avoid and emptiness. And indeed, I think the theme of modern society is emptiness. There's no purpose, there's no meaning, there's no, what's the point in life, so people are drawn to nihilism or they're drawn to religion in order to escape the emptiness, to find something outside of themselves. So what we need is to start filling that void, filling that void with beauty, with content, with achievement, with respect for that achievement. Arts obviously is one realm in which a lot can be done and it can be done before the intellectuals catch up and hopefully we'll see that, hopefully we'll see great art being produced and maybe the easiest place to do that today is in the movies and on television and maybe from there it'll expand to painting and sculpture and novels and plays and every other artistic element and maybe even forms of digital art that are not ones we completely contemplate today because we don't know of the possibilities that the world of computers and even the world of AI open up to us. So an appreciation for beauty and again I encourage you all to think about that first and foremost in your own life. If you want to bring about a renaissance in your world, you need to live that renaissance and that means you need to embrace, if not as a creator, then as a consumer. The values and the beauty that art can project to us, the purposefulness that art can concretize for us, the connection to this world, but that's going to be quite an achievement because we need great artists and I don't know where the great artists came from in the renaissance. I don't know how it happened that suddenly you had such a concentration of great artists in one place at one time. I certainly don't understand how it was that and this should challenge anybody who believes that IQ is purely genetic. Why is it genius all at once in Florence? Why is it genius all at once in the Netherlands? I mean a concentration. The concentration of genius in the Netherlands in the, I don't know, 17th century, maybe even the 16th century is stunning, stunning. The concentration of genius in Florence, I think I told the story that I was in Florence and I walked into a church, just a random church, I walked into every church I can in Florence because there's always something interesting in the churches and this is a church in which all the famous sons of, it's always sons, the men historically, but the sons of Florence were buried and it was blew me up my mind away because suddenly you realize, whoa, all of these people within about, I don't know, 200 years, period. They were all born here from the Medici's to the Galileo's to the, you know, Leonardo da Vinci was born but there but he was born not far from there to Michelangelo to Donatello to, I don't know, for for El was born in, I can't remember, but then you've got, you've got what's his name, Machiavelli who you have to acknowledge as a genius even if we don't agree with this philosophy and ideas and just go down the list and it's just stunning. I mean and think about the population was not very large, not very large, same thing in the Netherlands, if you think about who was around at what time, it, whoa, it blows your mind, there's a number of great painters, painters who were philosophers and thinkers and writers and in the arts in particular that these periods where there's this massive, what was the prominent concentration of genius in the Netherlands, I'm not sure I understand Gail, are you asking who they were or where they were or I mean they were, they were, I mean just think, think Vermeer and we're talking about the top, right, because you've got, you've got all kinds of people under Vermeer and who are magnificent but we're talking about Vermeer, Rembrandt, Rubens and then a bunch of others, you got Spinoza who's Jewish but you know it's not even part of the same genetic pool if you will and then on top of that you've got Pupendorf and Pupendorf and I forget the other guy's name, always forget the other guy's name, you've just got a bunch of thinkers and then of course don't forget outside of art, think about the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the Amsterdam banking, you know the extent to which commerce, the genius of commerce, of shipping, of shipbuilding, it is a concentration in the, of again 16th, 17th centuries of talent and ability that's just stunning and of genius that is truly stunning. Again I think that one should really question this whole issue of genes, IQ, if given examples like this, there's something else going on, yeah, Botticello, Raphael says Botticello, of course, Botticello in Florence, so it's art but it's more than that, right, it's in our world today there's a lot of good and most of that good is done by people done by people who we don't always like but who produce amazing things and here I'm talking about tech and in business and appreciation for that particular genius and that particular ability and that particular product, if we're going to move towards renaissance we've got to be highlighting the positives, we've got to be highlighting the beauty in the world and the efficacy of the world and the ability to produce in the world and the ability to create and change and innovate and improve, we can be critical but at the same time we've got to be focused on all the wonders that are going on, there's a lot of good around us, part of being enthusiastic for life, for your life, for your own life, is to be enthusiastic about the world and there's a lot to be enthusiastic about the world, we're not in the Dark Ages, we're not in the Middle Ages, not yet anyway, let's not pretend we are, let's not buy into the demeritism of the left and the demeritism of the right, let's focus and highlight and present to the world the beauty, the great, the amazing, the achievement and by the way that goes for art as well, it would be great if we produced new art but you know we've got a lot of art from the Renaissance through the end of the 19th century into the 20th century, great music, great painting, all of this stuff, highlight it, bring it forward, present it, get people to read it, get people to watch it, get people to experience it, don't settle for what is being produced today, don't settle for the culture of today, insist in your world and in your interaction and in the culture you create around yourself, insist on achievement, insist on beauty, insist on highlighting and praising and emphasizing and remembering and reinforcing greatness, you know this is why I always use my iPhone, it's because it's amazing, I just got a new one today, literally today, this is the 15 Pro, it's pretty cool although I have to get used to the fact that you know it's got this camera that really sticks out much more, I guess it's a much more sophisticated camera, the lenses are much bigger, so I'm kind of excited, my new iPhone, right? I mean the wonders of technology all around us are wonders, to be celebrated, to be highlighted and that needs to be integrated into our lives, that appreciation, you know just yesterday, you know, CRISPR, this new technology, the CRISPR gene editing for sickle cell anemia was just approved by the FDA, I mean I hate the fact that it has to be approved by the FDA, but it just was, which means that it's passed even the most crazy restrictions that the FDA places on it and here's a, I mean amazing technology and I mean I'm guilty of this as much as anybody, right? But we don't emphasize those things enough, those achievement enough and if we don't, we the believers in living life to the fullest and living a rational life of achievement, if we don't highlight achievement, who is going to? So, to bring about a new renaissance, we need to highlight achievement, we need to highlight success, we need to highlight great tech, we need to highlight great art, we need to highlight great achievement everywhere we can find it, great businesses and show people, look at all the great stuff we have, look at the great life you can live, look at that amount of health and life expansion and life quality that we all have, I mean one of the tricks that the left plays on us is it keeps telling us, no, no, life sucks, we don't live longer, they don't know anything, right? We don't live longer, we don't live better, yeah you might live longer years, but they're all suffering, yeah you might have some more wealth, but yeah life is drudgery and by the way there are all these poor people in the world and so you're just living, no, the world is amazing, it could be much better, put that aside for now, but how about we focus on the amaziness of the world and all the good things that exist out there and all the achievements and all the beauty and there is a lot of beauty, beauty, man-made beauty all around us, so each people around us highlight to the people around us, not in a Pollyanna silly way, but in a realistic, rational way that life is good, it's like what Alex does with fossil fuels, fossil fuels are good, I mean he doesn't just go around saying, attacking the climate change and challenging this and challenging that, no, he just says look, look at what fossil fuels do to human life, look at how much they aid our lives, look at how much our lives are better because of fossil fuels, you want to give this up, really? Yeah, maybe there's climate change going on, you know, figure out how to solve that, but don't give up on the thing that makes life possible, don't give up on the thing that makes life so successful and it gives life to billions of people focus on the positive, focus on the good. If we can convince people that counted to the stories told by the left and the right, there is an immense amount of good in the world, even today, even with all the problems, even with all the challenges, then we're halfway there because then the next question has to be, where does all this good come from? How does this good get created? How do we get the great tech? Where does this magnificent art come from? How do businesses produce all the stuff that makes it possible for me to live longer and consume amazing stuff and get my whatever kind of coffee at Starbucks and how does all this happen? How is this achieved? And one more of this, see the problem with the world today, a big problem with the world today, is they focus on all the negatives and they take the good for granted. The good is just there, the good just exists and we need to flip that and get them to be wowed by the good and yeah, they're problems, but okay, we'll deal with those. We'll deal with those. All right, I'll just remind everybody, before we go on, that you can ask questions. I see a lot of questions on the kind of the two to $10 range. It'd be great to get some $20 questions. If anybody's up for $50, that'd be great. I want to remind everybody that this show, all of my shows are made possible through the generosity of supporters like those doing the Super Chat or like those that contribute on a monthly basis through Patreon or PayPal or other places. Without the support from you guys, I couldn't be able to do the show. I'd have to find a different job, have to do something else. So thank you to all of those of you who support the show and of course, there's a certain energy that supporting it via Lifestein provides. So thank you to all of those and in particular, those of you who are consistent and dramatic and big supporters of the show. For example, Michael Sanders who just did $20, but does hundreds of dollars, hundreds of dollars a week asking me questions and contributing to the quality of the show, but really contributing to my ability to do the show. So thank you. Thank you. Remember this, it's probably about 20 people who really contributed on the Super Chat. We've got well over 100 watching. It'll be great if we got those just ratio up. If a bigger percentage of you guys participated and engaged, that would be great. All right. So we've got all this good stuff and the obvious question that has to come to mind to people is how do we get it? And this is not where we can step in with philosophy, but philosophy in order to explain the world, you know, to show them what is happening, why it happens. It is stunning to me. It's truly unbelievable to me how few people in the world in which we live understand that all of the good stuff put aside anything abstract, just the good stuff from the iPhone to the Starbucks to almost everything that they consume and including their health and everything associated with that. All of it is a product of human reason. When you ask people, where does all this stuff come from? They have no idea. When you ask people, audiences, you ask them, what makes human beings human? Empathy. Really? We survived as a species because we had empathy? You will know how the most popular philosopher maybe in terms of book sales out there, everybody I know who has read his books, people love his books. What is his answer to what makes human beings human beings, human beings, human beings, what makes success, prosperity, achievement possible, communication, ability to work in groups, that's it. I mean, that's a result of something much more fundamental. It's not the essence. So we live in a culture. There's at 100%, almost 100%, 99% ignorant of the things that make it possible for them to live, for them to thrive, for the culture to keep going. Because the only reason you can communicate, the only reason you can collaborate, the only reason you can build things and create things and change and make the world achieve in the world is reason. It's human reason. If we can just teach people that, which should not be hard, should not be hard. I mean, even when we collaborate, you've all been in teams at work, in a team. What has to happen in a team for the team to work to actually produce and to actually create something meaningful where the members of the team have to be thinkers. They have to be able to use their reason independently. They have to be independent thinkers. If the team is all yes, man, to the leader, then it's not a team. Yes, a lot of engineering projects get done in teams. But ideas almost always come from an individual. The science almost always comes from an individual. Yes, the experiments need whole teams in order to do, but the design of the experiment, the thought about the experiment, the idea for what we're even testing, individual. Science is done by individuals who collaborate with one another, feed off of one another, engage with one another, but it's thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking. So if we can emphasize all the good that exists in the world, all the beauty that exists in the world, and convince people that the means for attaining that success, that those achievements, that beauty is ultimately reason, thinking, observing reality, integrating the evidence of reality, based on that, hypothesizing explanations for what is going on in reality, testing those hypotheses, all in reality. But having ideas, ideas that are not just fantasies, but ideas that are grounded in facts, in reality, then sometimes I read your comments. It's hard not to get distracted, and it's funny. What does it mean to say that, I don't know, Harry Binsuang is one of the few ancient objectivists alive? What does that, what does ancient objectivists mean? What categorizes, I'm curious science 21, what categorizes one as an ancient objectivist? I want to know, I want to know what stage I become one, because I think I want to be an ancient objectivist. I think that would be a, that would be a good thing. Anyway, sorry, that was a distraction, but it was also funny. Over 70 is an ancient objectivist? All right, that's not too far for me. Oh, it's from the classical era of objectivism, anyway, the objectivist, Templar, whatever, ancient objectivists. All right, so reason, we have to understand that that's the source. And if we can convince the world of that, you really change the world, because if people start taking reason seriously, if we start taking thinking seriously, if we put our emotions, in a sense, in their place as ways to experience the world, not as means of cognition. And sadly, so many people out there live based on emotions. And most people just live floundering partially because they've never been taught, they've never been told, they've never been, it's not been indicated to them that the way to live is think, think, think, think, is use your mind, integrate the facts of reality. So that is, that would be huge, huge. We can just elevate reason to where it belongs. And then of course, the question becomes, you know, who reasons, individual's reason, reason is an attribute of the individual. It is a means of survival, that kind of is what we talked about. And reason requires what? What does reason require? What is the enemy of reason, the enemy's reason? I think it's not that hard to show people, is force, coercion, authority, that limits your scope of your thinking, that limits your ability to act on your thinking. So what you really need, what you really need is freedom, the freedom to think, the absence of coercion, the absence of force, you need liberty. So if you have reason and reason and a subtrality reason and an importance of reason, then it's relatively easy to get freedom from that. If your goal is human flourishing, if human flourishing is achieved through people's use of their reason, if achievement, success, beauty, prosperity, health is achieved through the use of the reason, well, how do we get people to, how do we promote reason? Well, leave people free, let them think for themselves, let them benefit from the actions that they take based on reason, let them act on their ideas, and see what happens. Every time we try freedom, it's hugely successful, we know that. So reason and freedom, all right, let me quick break to thank Daniela, these are people who've given us stickers, that's $50, thank you, and most of them are questions, look how many questions, God, lots and lots of questions, not that many stickers, Raphael has a sticker and Mike has a sticker. All right, so we've got, we don't have a lot of stickers, we have a few, and so appreciate the good, understand that the origin of the good is reason, and that for reason to flourish, you need freedom, but at the individual level, what is thinking for? What is thinking for? It's for ultimately the attainment of values, and values are things you want to gain or keep, but what is, what makes possible valuing and what gives values context? Well, life, the individual's life, the individual is the one reasoning, the individual is the one pursuing values, the individual is the one that needs to survive, needs to live, individualism, the pursuit of values for your life. Reason is the means by which we choose our values, we select our values, and it's the means by which we pursue our values, but what is the purpose of all that? The purpose is life, capital L life, remember capital L life from Yuan's rules for life, the pursuit of human flourishing, the pursuit of our flourishing as individuals, the pursuit of happiness, success, achievement, values, and if we think about the people who achieve all the things that we want to celebrate, as I discussed in a sense in part one, they all had a use reason, that it'd be free enough to be able to create what they created without being penalized. Michelangelo couldn't have created David 100 years earlier, for that matter he couldn't have created David about 100 years later, because 100 years earlier, well, I mean the knowledge again because of the discovery of Greece, but even short of that the church would not have allowed such projections of human heroism, human beauty, human achievement, and human nudity. Nudity was out, and 100 years later, well maybe he could have gotten away with David as a theme, he couldn't have gotten away with nudity again, because the counter-reformation was covering up the nudity he had painted on one of the walls of the Sistine Chapel. God forbid, God forbid, nobody, nobody blessed in God forbid, you show genitalia in a painting or in a sculpture, and indeed if you look at Bernini sculptures none of them are nudes, they're no nudes, you couldn't do it, his freedom was limited, couldn't do it, so you need to be free, you need to be able to use reason, you can't, you can't develop the skills, the talents, the ability to sculpt David or to paint a Mona Lisa with the perspective there and the particular expression she has and the particular use of colors that is integrated in there without reason, without knowledge, but all of that relies on an individual, a Michelangelo, Leonardo, Steve Jobs, pursuing his values, the values he cares about, the things he loves, the vision he has for himself, and you get out of this the whole idea of individualism, the whole idea of the pursuit of individual values, the whole idea of egoism, whether you go all out and a whole moral code of egoism, the idea of pursuit of individual values for individuals that every one of these achievers has done, you cannot achieve, you cannot work as hard as they worked, you cannot have the kind of vision that they have, if it wasn't about themselves, but being true to themselves, being true to their values, being true to their minds, to that egoism implicitly. So we need to appreciate the good, communicate that to the world, communicate the beauty and the amazing stuff in the world out there, and then we need to help the world see that all of that is a creation of individuals pursuing their values by using reason in a relatively political free environment and that that is the only way to achieve everything that we achieve. Individuals pursuing their values, their vision, their ideas, their own happiness by using their mind, their reason in a political environment that's relatively free, at least in that realm in which they're producing. And there you have the essence of a philosophical core that is what is required to change the world, that is what's required to bring about a renaissance, a new enlightenment. Then it's relatively easy to introduce people to Ayn Rand, and then Ayn Rand and these ideas become a part of the culture. So that I think is what needs to be done, showing where achievement comes from, but first showing that there is achievement, people are so cynical today, it's hard for them to grasp even though it's all around them. And I think this is also the way you need to think about your life, to the extent that you as an individual don't focus on these things. Then you don't live the philosophy. If you, you know, my yourself in negativity, in depression, in, I don't know, politics, your life goes nowhere. How are you going to change the culture? If your life is not that interesting, your life is not that important. All right, let's see. All right, we have got a lot of questions. I asked for $20 questions and we got a lot of them, no fifties today. We still need $10, $20 questions. All right. Remember, it's this kind of stuff, these super chat questions that keep the show going, makes it possible. You can also support the show monthly, Patreon and PayPal, yourunbookshow.com slash, I think it's membership, not support. I keep saying support, but I think it's actually membership, yourunbookshow.com slash membership. And you can sign up for support the show. And you can go to Patreon, yourunbookshow and all the links are below there in the description so you can, you can find them and you can support. I'll also remind you that Inran Institute is a sponsor of the yourunbookshow. The Inran Institute is right now promoting the Inran conference in Austin, Texas at the end of March, which will feature Greg Salamieri, Ben Baer and other Objectivist intellectuals. It will again be in Austin. It's primarily, but not exclusively, oriented towards people who want to delve deeper into Objectivism, explore its applications to a wide variety of topics. There'll be a lot of opportunities to engage directly with experts in Inran's ideas, as well as to know, to get to know current Inran University students and hear about their experiences. And you can apply for scholarship. It can be free. I think they even provide transportation and cover cost of hotels and stuff like that. You can do all that, inran.org slash start here. Please let them know that you found out about this from the yourunbook show. And yes, inran.org slash start here. Really, that's how you let them know that you found out about in the show, because you go through my website, through my link. That's my link. That's mine. So that's great. Please do that. Okay, Taze, thank you. Oscar, thank you. These are people who are giving stickers. They're not actually questions. And they are helping us achieve our financial goal for the day. All those goals geared towards, again, making the show possible. All right, let's jump into the very many questions we have. This is going to be a long show today, I think, particularly if you keep on asking questions, which is good. I want you to ask questions. We'll go as long as we need to. No hard stop. All right, Liam, how do we get objectives to become more patient about the pace of cultural change, because I do see it happening? I don't know. I mean, I think by listening to this show, like I think I urge patients, it's going to take time. Nothing happens quickly when it comes to cultural change, unless you're leveraging off of existing ideas, you're leveraging off of what already is going on, right? And so I think what we need is just, I think, first of all, we need to commit ourselves to cultural change, which means help make it happen. It's not going to happen by itself, right? Every one of us can help by just speaking out, and most importantly, living it, living it, right? And then we need to support organizations like the Anduin Institute, you support the Iran Book Show, support people who are actually making it a profession to try to have an impact on the culture on a grander, bigger scale, whatever that scale may be. And then I think you will get results. It will happen. It's going to be very slow. It won't happen in my lifetime, but it will happen maybe in some of your lifetimes. You will see real significant science, but you got to be patient. There's no shortcuts. That's the one thing there isn't, but every generation thinks it's got it. It'll figure out. It just do this one thing and it'll happen. It doesn't work that way. Harper Campbell says, while we dismiss conspiracy theories to explain phenomena in the world, won't Plato and Kant's philosophies elaborate conspiracy systems to control the world through making the mind unsure of itself? No, no, no, no, no. Kant did not want to control the world. Kant lived in a little village in Germany whose name I cannot pronounce, never left the place, lived a boring, relatively simple life. Kant might have been a nihilist deep down who wanted to see the world burn, but he never saw it. I don't think he could completely project how exactly it would happen. He wanted to undermine human reason. He wanted to undermine human life. But he didn't set out to conspire to control. I don't think it was interesting to call it. It was interesting destruction maybe, but not in control. And I think that's way too malevolent with regard to Plato. I mean, Plato is one of the first philosophers. He's grasping, he's being challenged. He's trying to figure out the world. He is a genius. They're no particularly good philosophers before him. I mean, they're philosophers, but there's nobody that he can say, oh, these guys were right. I mean, he's trying to figure it all out. I think he's doing the best that he can. I certainly don't think he does this in order to control. He wants to see it put into place. So he does, I think historically, team up with a ruler to try to implement his Republic. But it's not out of some desire to control human beings that he's doing it. It's a desire to understand the world and he's wrong. Right? And he's wrong about it. And it's easy to say post Aristotle he's wrong. It's certainly easy to say post Iran that he's wrong. That's also true of Kant. But it's not obvious at the time that he's wrong. I mean, very little is known about very little is known about human experience, what the human animal is. Very little is known as about reason, about reason, efficaciousness in reality. Very little is known. And again, ideas at the end come from our experiences in reality. So, you know, it only emphasizes how much of a genius somebody like Aristotle is. But even Aristotle doesn't get it completely right because he can't because of the time. But don't, don't, you know, accuse Plato and Kant of conspiring because they're not conspiring. I mean, Kant is conspiring in his own head, maybe towards destruction. He's, he's evading, but I don't think he's necessarily conspiring. I don't think he, it's real to him what he's doing. He's evading the consequence of what he's doing. He's evading that knowledge because I don't think he could do it or live with himself if he knew. But I don't think it's conspiracy. Whereas, I think that people out there who make stuff up in order to try to explain the world, if you want a conspiracy theory, then the biggest one is Christianity. That's a conspiracy theory. Religion generally is a great conspiracy theory. It's made up. It's trying to understand the world but superficially. And the building, constant building on top of it by people who, I think to some extent, to a large extent know that it's a myth, that it's not real, they're the conspiring. I mean, how many popes are actually believers, particularly in history? I mean, the Philandering ones, the murderous ones, the ones who slept with everybody. I mean, if they really believed, they knew they were going to hell, would they even do it? Do they, to what extent do you, can you say even that they believed? Yet, they perpetuated a conspiracy because that gave them control. That gave them power. So did Constantine really believe in Christianity? In its formulation at the Nicene Conference, was the formulation at the Nicene Conference of Christianity a means for him to control and for that control to be perpetuated, to serve what he believed it would serve, which is the Roman Empire? Those are conspiracies. But I don't think that's true of philosophers. So there's a big difference. David, at 11, my nephew is a good student, a star athlete and a gifted artist. His parents are encouraging him to be a rational thinker. What advice would you give them regarding a potential career in art for him? I mean, it's very difficult. I mean, I don't know what kind of an artist he is. It really depends on what kind of an artist. But look at those parts of the world out there, those schools, those places where he's going to be taught good art. Don't look for degrees. Don't look for credentials. Look for knowledge, objective knowledge. So if you sculpt your painter, there are a few schools in the world, particularly if you're painted a few more, some in the United States and some in Italy and Spain and I think in Northern Europe, there are a few schools that teach kind of classical painting and how it's done, drawing, painting, anatomy, the things that you need to do to be a great artist. Sculpture. Also, there are a few, fewer than in painting, but there are a few, God, not many, handful. So you really have to search them out. In music, I don't know, but find those places that still teach harmony and melody and beauty, art without beauty. I don't know what you would have to do for literature. I don't know if literature can be taught, right? I mean, certainly good writing can be taught. So that is all good. I mean, romantic manifesto gives you the philosophy. It doesn't give you how to do it at all. That would be pure rationalism. It just gives you the philosophy of art, but you've got to find people who know how to do it to teach you the skill involved. So you've got to find the bastions of great art that still exists out there, the remnants, the people who still remember, the people who learn from people who learn from people who've learned from the masters in the 19th century, the 18th century, whatever, right? Depending on the art form, different art forms have a different history, right? So all of that. So yeah, I'd love you to, so that'd be great. That's what you want to do. Beware of credentialism, degreeism, elite universityism, all of that, to hell with that, particularly for artists. Another way is apprenticeship. Find somebody really good and have them apprentice with them. And they don't have to have the same sense of life as you do. There are a lot of good painters out there, for example, who don't have my sense of life. I don't like their paintings, but they are talented. They can paint. And if you want to learn the skill, they'll teach you the skill, all right? Michael, what makes the Khmer Rouge more egalitarian in their practices than traditional communist ideology? I mean, I think it's the, you know, I don't know exactly what it is, but it's that they modernized it. They were inspired by modern egalitarian thinkers by kind of the postmodernists. They are not Marxists in the traditional sense. They don't believe in the material, what is it, necessity of history. And that this is all predetermined and these are forces and they are classes and the classes of battling. They think Marxist is kind of silly and superfluous and too, quote, scientific. They want equality and they want equality now, and they want everybody to be equal in all dimensions. So they don't want, so, you know, the communists had a certain element of pragmatism in them. You know, they understood that human beings wouldn't produce quite enough, so you give them a little flavor of private property during Lenin's time. You have factories that, you know, you need skill, people have to go to universities, people have to learn stuff. Not everybody's really equal. They know that. They're more focused on equality of outcome in terms of the standard of living you have, but even there, not really, not that much to some extent. And communism evolved in both the Soviet Union and I think in China to basically control. It deviated dramatically from the ideology, deviated dramatically from the ideal as they foresaw it. The Khmer Rouge were committed to an ideal now, to the creation of the utopian now. So there are no factories. There's no skilled labor. There is no, we don't need any professors. We don't need any intellectual, everything is material. Everything is worked by muscle because that's the one thing where it's easier for us to be equal in. And so therefore you kill the knowledgeable. The Russians didn't. The Russians needed, I don't know, the communists needed, they wanted atomic bombs. So they helped educate a certain group of people who had inclination towards physics and got them into schools and educated them and taught them so they could build them the bombs or whatever they could build them. They valued math. They had some value towards science. Khmer Rouge rejects science. They take the postmodernist rejection of reality science and they are much more primitivists. All we need is to go back to nature. That's the ideal. That's perfection. I mean egalitarianism is completely nuts. It's a dominant philosophy on our campuses. But it is, the Khmer Rouge took it to its complete logical conclusion. And that made them one of the most, if not the most, murderous, barbaric regimes in human history because they were trying to implement it. In the movie, again, I highly recommend the movie. First they killed my father because it does a good job of concretizing the horror without being gratuitously violent. By doing it through the eyes of a young girl, it gives the horror a real concrete, a real reality. Howard Sultz, did you see the film Charlie Wilson's War? Yes, I did, but do I remember it? I don't think so. It was about Charlie Wilson, congressman. He goes to Afghanistan. Yeah, I mean, it's based on a true story. It was entertaining. I didn't think at the end of it it was that interesting or gave any great new insight that I didn't have about the war. But it was an entertaining movie, certainly. But it wasn't, at least that I remember, go to the heart of what I think it related to the Afghan war and to supporting the Taliban, supporting the Mujahideen in the 1980s and all of that and how that backfired later on. But yeah, you know, again, it was entertaining, but it was also done in a lighthearted way for a pretty serious topic, which is unfortunate. People don't take things seriously enough, I think, in the world we live in. I don't think it, I think there's anything new there. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't remember. But it was fun, definitely worth watching. Michael Sanders again. Michael, is Netanyam motivated more by destroying Hamas or maintaining his own power? Who was your favorite Israeli prime minister? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, he was, he's motivated by both, but I think what drives him is motivation by power. I think is what drives him. I think he's always driven him. And his destroying Hamas is a means to power. And I mean, he also has a certain sense that this is the right thing to do and needs to be done. But everything I think for Netanyam is filtered through the lens of power. Who is my favorite Israeli prime minister? God, I really don't know, because I'm critical of all of them. And I can't really recall them. I mean, I think Golda Meir certainly had her positives. Ben Guion was the founder, but he was a socialist. Beggin, of course, turned the country around in a sense that he was the first right wing or somebody who rejected the left prime minister. But he made some enormous blunders. Then there was a number of really ill-descript prime ministers. Sharon was not bad until he decided to give Gaza to the Gazans and exit it completely and then had a stroke. So we couldn't even follow up on that. So the thing about Netanyam and the reason I criticize him all the time is that he's been prime minister for the last, you know, most of the last 20 years, 16 of the last 20 years, he's been prime minister. So he's been the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history. And is he the worst? Is he one of the worst? I can't say that. He's bad. That I can say. Andrew, with the progress in medicine, I don't think the statistics are going to be able to hold back cures for serious illnesses. The statists are going to be able to hold back cures for serious illnesses. How best to connect medical achievement to capitalism? Well, again, I think every achievement has to be connected before you connect it to capitalism. It has to be connected to reason and goal, the pursuit of goals. And capitalism has the system of reason and that facilitates the freedom to pursue one's goals. I think that's the connection. So you can. These drugs could not be produced unless scientists were free to think, at least to some extent, free to think and pursue their ideas, not somebody else's ideas, their own ideas, experiment, fail, try again in an environment that was relatively not completely free, but relatively free. You don't get these advancements in completely unfree countries. No health innovation is happening in North Korea or Cuba. So that's how you connect it. You connect it through reason and through people's independent judgment, the pursuit of their independent ideas, independent goals, independent motivations. And that all requires freedom and that is capitalism. And wherever we allow for some capitalism and where people respect reason and are allowed to pursue their ideas, you get achievement. And that's true in healthcare, like everywhere else. All right. Wow. Just looking at the number of questions. All right. Mirko, which is great, by the way, and we need seven more $20 questions. Mirko says, Objectivism changed my life and my why to approach the design of my products and the way I approach the design of my products. I design aircraft using the latest technology and creativity. That's so cool. The most important thing is to have a solid moral standards and use reason. Absolutely. Thank you, Mirko, for sharing that. And absolutely, I mean, think how beautiful the world would be if the designers of our buildings, our cars, in this case, our aircraft, our flying cars in the future, and everything else was designed by people who took morality seriously, took their values seriously, and appreciated the role of their minds and what their mind was capable of and could do. I mean, the world in which we lived would be so, so, so phenomenally beautiful and amazing and successful and everything. So, yeah. All right. Michael says, a second renaissance isn't possible in a world where people can't think and haven't developed 10% of their pride, self-esteem and moral clarity, needed to respond to ranch heroes. That's right. And the question is, how do you get them there? How do you get them to the point where they can respond? And I think, again, if you take young people and you focus on beauty and achievement and success and pursuit of values and you explain to them and you show them where they come from in their own mind and how they achieve, that's the way to do it, you know, take achievement and reason and the pursuit of values and you have it. And you have it. Andrew, an interviewer friendly to Rand asked if she thought the pursuit of happiness was important. She said, mildly shocked, I don't see how anything could be more important. Is happiness undervalued as a serious goal? If so, why? Well, yes. I mean, in the culture, absolutely. I mean, Jordan Peterson proposes it partially. It's because happiness is not understood. You know, Jordan Peterson has this horrible understanding of happiness as basically short-term, momentary pleasure, joy and doesn't have a deep understanding of the state of being that is happiness and what that requires in order to achieve. But also, so the very term of happiness is defined. And people like Jordan Peterson do a lot of harm by doubling up on the bad definitions or the wrong definitions on them, non-existent definitions, on the mushy feeling about these things. That's reason one, number one. The second reason happiness is undervalued is because egos are undervalued because happiness is the most egoistic thing you could want, right? You don't want to just live. You want to live happily. You want to live amazingly. And egoism is required. So again, when you undercut egoism, when you tell people their moral purpose in life is something out there, some meaning outside of them, then you're undercutting the imports of happiness because you're undercutting them. You're undercutting themselves. And so you're undermining their focus and their ability to discover their own meaning, which is necessary to find happiness, their own purpose in life, because they're looking out there. They're looking at religion. They're looking at an intrinsic somewhere out there. There's my meaning, which is nonsense. So instead of looking at using reason, looking at yourself and the world and figuring out where you can actually create values in this world, where you can actually be productive, which is ultimately where you're going to find meaning. So altruism is the main way in which we undermine the pursuit of happiness. And of course we undermine by neglecting reason. We undermine the tool to achieve happiness. Jennifer, I was listening to an interview with Neil Perth before his last tour in 2015. And he was asked why he practiced so much even now. And he said, because it can never be too good. Absolutely. Good for Neil. Yeah, I mean, he was, in spite of the fact that he kind of rejected Iron Man later, he was inspired by how he clearly shaped his life, shaped his attitude towards so many things, even if he didn't buy into entire philosophy. You need more people to add attitude with the attitude of, I can never be too good about everything in their lives, every aspect of their life. Not just their drumming and their career, but their life and their happiness. How about that? Right? I can never be too happy. Never be too happy. I need to keep practicing. How can I be happier? Now you tell that Jordan Peterson, he looks at you like you're nuts. Like you're crazy. Happiness, something just happens to you. It's an accident. If you have it, be happy that you have it because it's not going to last long and you might lose it. Who knows where it went to? And who knows where it came from? That's Jordan. And that is so destructive for young people. It is so, so it's the opposite of what we're trying to teach, exact opposite. Richard, Richard just came in and just took us to the target and got us to the goal. So thank you, Richard. $142 that kind of get us to where we need to be. Richard said, Merry Christmas, happy holidays and happy new year. Thank you for all you do. Thank you too. And thank you, Richard, for being such a great supporter of the show. And yeah, Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Happy new year. Happy December. It's a great month, particularly in Puerto Rico, where it's hot and the sun is shining and you can go to the beach. Christmas in Puerto Rico is just amazing. All right, let's see. I'm not straw manning Jordan Peterson. That's exactly what he thinks. I can, you can find videos of him saying exactly what I'm saying. That is not a straw manning at all. Many people listen to him, extract the good stuff and evade literally ignore and evade the stuff you don't like. All right. If you could only have music or visual arts for the rest of your life, which would you choose? Huh? So visual arts, you mean painting and sculpture or music? Wow, that's a tough one. That's a tough one. Yeah, it's hard to, hard to live without. I'd say probably I, I, I'd want the visual arts, but yeah, that's tough. That's tough. Probably visual arts, just because seeing is such a dominant sense. But luckily, we don't have to make those choices. Yeah, I don't have to destroy my hearing or destroy my eyesight. Most people take music because music is so direct. Most people don't know how to deal with visual arts or how to appreciate them or how to let them move you. I think that's true. Not it, not it meant as an insult or anything, just an observation about the culture. We don't have a culture that people understand or can really moved or really influenced by the visual arts. Chad, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Do you know what percent of people are under 25 at the average Ocon? Also, do you find a difference in reading versus listening to books? I'm about to read out the short for the first time, listening to audio, first time around, listen to the audio book, first time around. Loved it. First question, how many people under 25? At least 20% maybe up to a third, at least in the last few years. So between 20% and a third, so that would be somewhere at least 100 people under 25. Probably more, probably more like 150 to 160, something like that. But I'm guessing. I should know this stuff, but I'm guessing. But it's a good guess. Look, listening versus reading, it really depends. The more I want to retain, the more I really want to be immersed in a book. I have to read it. Listening is great to get a sense of it, to get a flavor out, to learn a few things, but you're not as immersed in it, and you're not learning as much. You don't retain as much, you just don't retain as much. So reading is much more demanding. It's at the right pace. It's a pace of cognition. Somebody reading it to you is, particularly if you listen to some stuff, which I do at one and a half times or one and a quarter times, way too fast. You're just not retaining enough. Now I do it a book's way. It's fine. I'm trying to figure out the book. I'm trying to know a particular topic, but not too in depth. That's fine. And I'm just trying to do a lot. But if I really want to know something, really want to delve into it, really want to study it, I have to read it. So the experience about the shrug, reading it, I think, is going to be far more immersive. Far more, because you're going to read, and you're going to read slower than you listen, and it's going to sink in at a different pace. And it's just going to, you're going to be most in it emotionally and intellectually, just, it'll be different. And I think, I think ultimately better. All right. Thank you to all the $20 questions and Richard's 142. And so let's switch to the $10 to $2 questions. Start, we've got from Irvind and probably, I mispronouncing that. Go to the cinema and watch Godzilla minus one. You're going to love it. The plot is fantastic. Put in Japan's, it's in Japan's aftermath of World War II by far the best movie of 2023 and one of the best of all time, a 10 out of 10. Okay, I will go watch it. I'm not sure exactly when I'll be able to, but I will go watch it. And yeah, I'm not sure exactly when, but I'm hoping the next few weeks. Will says, great answer about audio versus physical books. I agree completely. I'll just add that the audio books are perfect for rereading. Yes, I agree. James, if Chris Christie teamed up with Nick Haley to get her the nomination, I think he would make a decent vice president. Yeah, but I don't think she'll do it. And I think Nicky Haley has to go after Trump. She has to do it. She can't have a surrogate do it. She has to show leadership. She has to show she's a presidential caliber and as such, you cannot unless you go after Trump. You have to challenge Trump in one way or another. You have to find out how to do it. You can't just challenge his age. You have to challenge who he is and what he is. And you have to challenge the fact that he's a loser. And somebody will ask you, why is he a loser? And you have to be able to say that. Okay. Michael, do you prefer lobster crab? Lobster, sweet, amazing. You got good lobster? Yeah, lobster. Richard Moncada, please wish my wife, Caroline, a happy birthday. Happy birthday, Caroline. Yeah, happy birthday. Have a fantastic day, a happy day, a day filled with values and love, filled with love. Thank you, Richard. Appreciate it. Clark, is Kant the reason we live in a world where truth has to be explained again and again while light is believed right away? Yeah, in a sense. I mean, Kant, Plato, but yes, I think it's Kant and of course all the postmodernists and all the people. I mean, you can't just say Kant, because it's Kant and all the people who applied his philosophy in a variety of different ways, from Hegel to Marx to the postmodernists who were all in one way or another, Kantian. So he had multiple conveyor belts, conveying his ideas into the culture, multiple, whereas truth can only have one. He had multiple in all kinds of directions resulting in all kinds of ideas, ideas, but all basically undermining reason. Duda Bunny says, what do you mean? What do you mean when you say there is no there there with certain people? God, what do I mean when I say there's no there there? I don't know. I wish you'd give me an example. It means that they're not for real, I think. It's not true. They're not true. Maybe there's no integrity. There's no principle, solid foundation behind what they say, how they act, what they do. That's what I mean by there's no there there. There's no content. There's no principle. Gail says, was the, oh, I answered this already, the prominent concentration. Yeah. Michael, as you can see, Michael asks a lot of questions. It's great. The dark ages is still alive and well in the YouTube comments section. It's alive and well everywhere in our culture. I mean, it's in Russia, it's in Iran, it's in parts of China, it's in North Korea, it's in Cuba, and it's in America, it's on TikTok, it's all over the place. It's more explicit, some place less explicit, but it's never gone away. The antagonism towards the enlightenment always seems to resurrect itself. Ryan, I had a therapist who told me to ground my emotions in reality, to be more selfish, earn self-esteem, and find a strong purpose. Is the field of psychology still a positive cultural change? I think potentially, yes. I think the work of cognitive psychology, cognitive behavioral psychology, I think that the self-help movement and the psychology that is that is worked out for that. I think it's very, what is psychology about? It's about helping people achieve happiness, achieve harmony, achieve sanity, and that selfish. So to the extent that it's developing and to the extent that the scientists in it look and observe methods that do not work and reject them, it will work towards better methodology, even if it doesn't have as good of a philosophical foundation as we would like. But yeah, I think psychology is a better element in the culture and has that potential, particularly when done by some qualified people. And again, based on, you know, Gina's going to be here on Thursday. That's a great question to ask Gina. She's a cognitive psychologist, studied cognitive psychology, and I think has a fairly positive view of that school of psychology, which is, I think, a sort of positive. Stephen, what do you think of Johnny Cash? The film, I walk the line, his song, Man in Black. You know, I like Johnny Cash. I like the energy songs have. I like the emotion that they convey. I like his kind of rough voice. It fits the kind of songs he sings. I liked the film I walked the line. It's kind of a sad film. I mean, it's always sad to see how musicians in particular over the last 50 years have been self-destructive. So many of them have been self-destructive Johnny Cash as well. But it was interesting. And yeah, do I remember Man in Black? I think so. I think I know what, you know, the song you mean. And yeah, I mean, I like your songs. I mean, again, they don't always have the right sense of life. They're a little dark. The people in them are not always the best people. But I appreciate kind of the sentiment and the emotion he conveys in the music. Michael, people who can't communicate think everything is an argument. People who lack accountability think everything is an attack. Yeah, I think there's some truth to that. Durabani, what did you think of the debate between DeSantis and Newsom? And I don't like any of these debates. I mean, what can I say? I don't like DeSantis. I don't like Newsom. I don't like any of these people. I thought the best part, which was really good, was DeSantis on energy. Because, you know, he obviously internalized for the purpose of debate, at least whether internalized in terms of his actual beliefs, I don't know. But for the debate, he internalized Alex Epstein's talking points, and he presented them really well. It was by far the best thing he's done. By far the best I've heard him on any topic. Newsom is an arrogant, statist. That's all he's got. He's not that smart. He's not that articulate. But he's definitely arrogant, and he thinks a lot of himself, and he's an unbelievable status. He's a power luster. He destroyed San Francisco, and then he went on to continue the destruction of San Francisco, and then he went out to continue the destruction of California. Now he wants to come and continue to destroy the United States of America. And DeSantis just doesn't come across as authentic, and he's too canned, and I don't know what he believes. I don't know what he believes. It was a better debate than the Republican debates, to a large extent because there were just two of them. And because it didn't really delve into the kind of ugly, personal attacks that Trump and Vivek seemed to bring to debates, and seemed to relish, and seemed to focus on. It was more focused on content than on personal. Michael, if parents could control the gender of their offspring, would the female population fall dramatically? Certainly in certain cultures it would. In America, I don't know. I don't think so. We live in a place, I think, in a country in the West in particular where I think women are valued as much as men, particularly, you know, certainly as children. But certainly in some cultures, the population of women would drop significantly. Apollosou said, I asked AI to create a Jack Vitruiano style painting, and was impressed. How does AI fit into arts and towards a second renaissance? Well, I think AI is going to be a tool people use. And now, you know, AI could create you art on a screen. AI cannot yet paint you art. It cannot take a Frank Vitruiano painting and actually paint it on a canvas. That takes knowledge that I'm not sure AI has. It would have to gain that knowledge somehow. But, you know, so AI is going to be a tool that artists use to make their art better. AI itself does not produce art. It produces pseudo art. And, you know, maybe very few of us will be able to distinguish. But it is, you know, what you're looking for is the originality of an artist, the metaphysical value judgment that is projected by an artist, by an individual. But he will now be aided by tools that AI can provide, which are pretty amazing. Which are pretty amazing. Clock, the older I get, the more I realize if everyone likes you, you have a serious problem. Well, the thing about me is I don't have that serious problem. It's one problem I do not have, even a little bit. I have tons of people who hate me. And I guess I take some pride in that. That doodle bunny, did you see the guy who shot up the University of Las Vegas was a professor? Yes. If you had kids today, would you recommend them to go to college? Yeah, I would. We think about what college, depending on what they want to study, then go to a place that did less harm. And I bet you can't take from one university professor who shoots up a place. You can't extrapolate that to colleges. And you never know when that would happen and when you will be in the crosshair. So you can't plan based on that. You can plan based on the curriculum, playing based on the quality of the professors, quality of what they teach. And that very much depends on the field your child wants to go into, what they want to study. Stephen Katz says, right on your own, I try to see the good to. Excellent. James Taylor, I had a professor tell us that Gaza is an open air prison constructed by an apartheid regime. I swear these people's brains are open air toilets. They really are. They really are. They don't care about facts. They don't care about reality. They shape reality. They're told reality doesn't exist to begin with. They shape reality to fit their preconceptions. Harper Campbell does me lay, speak a word of English. I've never seen him do an interview in English. Will you advertise him, advise him in April using Gloria Alvarez as translator? I don't know. I don't know. And I don't know. I just don't know. I have plenty of translators I could use. I don't know if I'm going to meet him. I don't know if he's interested. I don't know if that's on the agenda. I don't even know if I'm going to Argentina yet. So we'll see. John Davis. What percentage of ARI's board of directors would of yours say a morally perfect? Oh, I don't know. And I don't know what the point of a question like that is or what going around saying that person's morally perfect. That person's not. I mean, it's hard to be morally perfect. It's something we all strive towards. But do I know if any of them have evaded ever? I don't know. The real question is, do I know them to be moral people? Yes. That's all I need, right? Do I know them to never, ever, ever in the entire lives evaded? Nope. I don't know that. So they never evade today, even in their personal relationship. I don't know. But it's not a relevant question. The relevant question is always, what's in it, in a sense, is for whom and for what? So are they moral people in the way they deal with issues related to the Anduin Institute and the day they deal with issues related to objectivism, to their membership, to the best of my knowledge? Did any of them commit really horrific immoralities? No. But in everything else, they're moral. That's what I need to know. I'm morally perfect. Martin, with reference to the things like conspiracy theories or supernatural explanations, you often say human beings need explanations. Could you expand a bit on that statement? Yes. Because we are cognitive being, because we're being the deals with concepts and integrate, I mean, basically our basic means, our reason, what our reason does is integrate the evidence provided to us by our senses. I think that that makes us a curious being. It makes us a being that, well, our survival depends on our curiosity. That is, for human beings to survive, we need to gain a causal understanding of this leads to that. Again, we don't have the instinct to hunt. So we need to understand the causal relationship that leads us to being able to build a weapon, a tool, to be able to say that if I do this to an animal, this will happen, to be able to figure out these plants are poison because I've observed it and I can extrapolate for that. I can induce them that these plants are not. That is what we need in order to survive. So we need causality. Now, for some of that, it's fairly easy because it's right in front of our face. But by necessity, given that we are constantly looking for causal relationships, in other words, explanations, we also would like to know why does it rain? Why does it rain when it rains and not rain other times? I mean, it's existentially important, for example, for farming. Is there a patent to the rain? And therefore, we seek explanation. Can I bring about rain when it's not raining? For example, by praying, by doing a rain dance. So in order to survive human beings need to understand the world around them, and that understanding is unlimited because human survival is unlimited in terms of human needs and human wants. So they're constantly looking to explain the world. And some of those explanations are beyond them. That is, 10,000 years ago, they didn't know what caused rain. So it's easy to say, well, there's a rain god. They didn't understand why the tides rose and float from rivers. There's a river god. But then once they understood there was more to that, then those gods went away and we had one god. And then ultimately, once we got science and scientific method, we didn't need God at all anymore. Okay, hopefully that explains why we need explanations, why you need an explanation. I'm kidding. All right, Apollo Zeus says, happy birthday, Linda Mansour. Happy birthday, Linda. WCZN. It seems historical anthropology is the secular equivalent of mythology and is dominated by leftists. Are they any objectivist anthropologist? I don't think so and I don't know the field. And I don't know if there are any objectivists or any good ones. I just don't know the field. Michael, if you give up reason, you give up self. Yes, absolutely. Reason, you are your mind. Antonio Bravo, you're on. Thank you, Antonio. I'm not sure what the Bravo is for, but I'll take it. John, did I ever read an entire book or essay by Kant in full? If so, which, why did Kant support the US Revolutionary War? I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. I don't know if she read a complete book or an entire essay. We'd have to ask Leonard or maybe Harry knows, I'm not sure. Kant had a whole mixture of ideas. And some of his ideas in politics are quite good. But Einwand and other philosophers and, you know, the objectivist philosophers are the only ones who criticize Kant. Many, many other philosophers do as well. But Einwand explains in great detail, and Leonard Peacock explains in great detail, that fundamental to the impact of a philosophy is not so much its politics, but rather its metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. And Kant's metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics are evil. The epitome of human destruction. And ultimately, if you understand the American Revolution, they're inconsistent with it. But that doesn't stop people from, people can hold inconsistent ideas without any particular problem. So Kant, defense, I mean, Kant is viewed by some people as an individualist. Kant is viewed by some people as an advocate for the individual. And by some people as part of the Enlightenment. I mean, you could argue that Kant himself viewed himself as part of the Enlightenment early on in his career. I'm not sure by the end he did, but certainly early on he was. He considered himself. But people can be erroneous about themselves and can hold ideas that don't actually add up, that are not consistent. I think, I've got a book here. Anyway, there's a bunch of philosophers. If you read other people's interpretation of Kant, you'll find that Ayn Rand is not wrong about Kant. She is absolutely right. I mean, the way philosophers interpret Kant is very much the way Ayn Rand interprets Kant. So certainly, Ayn Rand is not unique in her interpretation of Kant. Maybe not everybody does. But many, many, many people interpret Kant's metaphysics and epistemology exactly the way Ayn Rand does. They just agree with him or they sympathize with him or they build on that. But there's no big disagreement. No, Kant didn't say that. He absolutely did. The numinal, phenomenal world. His ethics. I mean, there are quotes from Kant in Ayn Rand and Lenin Pikov. So they read enough to be able to quote him. And Lenin has read Kant, yes. Lenin actually studied German at some point in his graduate studies. Lenin Pikov to read Kant. Andrew, thanks for doing these positive constructive shows. What is the role of Christianity in detecting, in detaching reason from happiness? Oh, huge. I mean, the role of Christianity is primarily of detaching reason from life. Sorry, happiness from life. Happiness from, as an achievement, as achievable. Happiness from values. Christianity is destructive to human happiness. And from the beginning, and just look at Augustine's life and you can see it, it's your sinful. Happiness is only in the next life. And of course, reason will not get you to the next life. You need faith for that. So only faith can lead to the to heaven, which is the only place where happiness is possible. Happiness is not possible in this world. Right? We can talk another time more about Christianity. There's a lot more to say about that. Paul says, if you could look like or similar to any man you can think of, who would be your ideal or close to? What a weird question. I don't know. I don't know. I'd like Brian Johnson's body. How about that? I don't want his, I don't like his face, but his body. Brian Johnson is the guy who's trying to live forever. And he's like, he's a guinea pig for all these experiments and all these science on how to do that and how to achieve that. I mean, he's got, he's fit, unbelievably fit. Right? Michael, have you ever played paintball? Yeah, paintball is a blast. I'm painted many, played in many years, but paint, paintball is a lot of fun. Is it true that Israeli government help Israeli rednecks violate legitimate property rights of West Bank people unrelated to actual military strategy? Israeli rednecks? I don't know why you would call them Israeli rednecks. You don't have to do that. Israeli mystics. So yeah, there are probably cases where the Israeli government has helped Israeli religious fanatics violate legitimate property rights of West Bank people. Israel is not perfect. Israel is a flawed country. It's just much better than anything else in that region of the world. And is about as good and as bad as most of Western Europe in the United States, it's just violating property rights. And yeah, they are bad people in Israel, they're bad people in the Israeli government, and they do bad things. And those bad things unrelated to military strategy, absolutely. The difference is that for the most part, in Israel, when people do bad things, including violate people's private property rights, they go to jail, they get arrested, they're prosecuted. Now, that doesn't mean it's perfect. It doesn't mean some people in the government don't collude with bad elements and get, let them get away with it. But in general, you know, it's again, best country in the region and as good as most countries in Western Europe and almost as good as the United States. Mark, how important is freedom of consciousness to any new renaissance? The renaissance occurred under authoritarianism. This seems likely to repeat. Well, I mean, you need some freedom, right? So the more totalitarian the regime is that it's likely you're going to have a renaissance. You have to at least have the ability to sculpt a Michelangelo, a David, if you're Michelangelo without state permission, without state, you know, breaking it up and trashing it. So there has to be some element of freedom, some element of freedom of consciousness, how much? It depends how it all evolves, how it all evolves. So I definitely think we have enough freedom today to get it going. The more authoritarian you become, the more difficult it is to reignite an enlightenment. Possible, but harder. What is some view statistics as a form of cognition? Statistics are self-evident and philosophy is ignored. What? I see this mentality in social media a lot, but I assume it's largely a sociology thing. No, I mean, I think it's a consequence of pragmatism. Statistics are okay. Well, how does it usually happen? How does it usually occur? And that's very consistent with the pragmatic view of philosophy. So statistics are a tool of the pragmatist, a tool of the pragmatist. And philosophy requires principles, long-term thinking, reasoning. Look, and I'm pro-statistics, I think statistics are very, very valuable, but they have to be put into the context of actual thinking, the context of principles and ideas. But statistics are taken as the be all end all because pragmatism says whatever works in a short run. Well, whatever works in a short run, how do you know what works in a short run? Statistics. All right, guys, thank you to all the superchatters. Really, really appreciate it. Thank you for everybody's support. Thank you to everybody who supports the show on a monthly basis as well. You guys make this show possible. I will see you all on Monday. Have a great rest of your weekend. Tomorrow is my day off. I do still owe a members program. I know, I know, I know. And it will be one of these Sundays, but not tomorrow. So I'm working on that. But thank you guys. Have a great weekend. I hope this positive show inspired you a little bit to be more positive, not just with yourself, but with the world out there. All right, everybody, have a great rest, a great week, great weekend. See you Monday.