 Lucky to have the pleasure to introduce our next speaker. His name is Dr. Eric Daniels and He's a new speaker to the 21 convention. He's a guest speaker for the Ein Rand Institute He's also an assistant professor at Clemson Institute for the study of capitalism And he's been teaching all over internationally on American history and philosophy for the past 12 years Which is astounding because he looks very young I'm pleased to introduce Dr. Eric All right, well welcome My topic for today that I want to you to think about is the idea of the self-made man It's an idea which many of us are familiar with and what I want to start out by doing is just to ask you briefly To come up with some examples to think of a few ideas of who are some of the best examples of self-made men Think of people like Sam Walton Steve Jobs Oprah Martha Stewart Pierre Omdar who started eBay out of his out of his own house People like Mark Cuban Michael Jordan We can think of these examples all across different realms of business Different industries a sports figure an entertainment figure. There are a lot of people that we call self-made men and These are usually the most successful and what ought to be the most admired people in our culture and Indeed if you go back into American history and you look at some of the people in American history You look at the Andrew Carnegie's the John Rockefellers You look at some of the names that you probably don't even know the Charles Kettering's right who was founder of AC Delco or Thompson the one of the minds behind General Electric Thomas Edison Eli Whitney America in a sense compared to other countries to compare to other cultures is literally in a sense littered with stories of rags to riches self-made men people who picked themselves up and Grew to prominence fame success now. There's a problem though These people are not venerated They're not held up as the kinds of heroes that they actually are Because of certain problems in our culture one of the things that you notice when you look at the Bill Gates or the Steve Jobs What do people actually think about these individuals? Not wow think about how terrific it is that this individual basically Went from almost nothing or from very modest circumstances came up with a brilliant idea Came up with a brilliant new invention or new way of doing things or new way of organizing and made a success out of it actually succeeded in this world despite obstacles despite things in their way and Achieved something great What do people actually look at they try to drag them down? They try to say oh Bill Gates is only great when he gives away billions of dollars not when he makes billions of dollars Right Steve Jobs. Oh, he was a jerk Right. Yeah, despite the fact that everybody has an iPhone or an iPad despite the fact that the whole Telecommunications industry has been fundamentally transformed by the people that jobs hired and the people that he worked with and the ideas That he came up with but everybody wants to focus on the negative Everybody wants to focus. I mean look when jobs died one of the things one of the most Important things that the media reported that they obsessed about was the fact that he hadn't given away as much money as Bill Gates Rather than focus on his achievements rather than focus on all the great things that he did the ways that he transformed Everyone's lives through his achievements. They wanted to focus on some of the negatives Now the idea of self-making the idea of the self-made man is a relatively new concept in the history of thought The idea of social mobility as such is relatively new It's really only been around for about the last 200 years and there are a couple of really important reasons Why social mobility or self-making the idea that someone can rise from lower Circumstances and move up the social ladder move up the economic ladder or contrary to move down it by accident or by Fault of their own there's two reasons really that this idea is so new number one The idea is so new because it's only in a free society that such Possibilities exist that people actually have the room and the freedom Protected politically to be able to move up and down the social ladder to have the idea that just because someone was born to modest Circumstances or just because someone has fallen on hard luck doesn't mean that they can't rise up that they can't succeed in life Now the other reason of course is just the fact of history For thousands of years people didn't have these opportunities because there weren't a lot of opportunities to be had Modern civilization in some ways is what gives rise to the idea of a stratified social hierarchy a stratified economic hierarchy Before this people basically did what their parents did if your father was a farmer You were a farmer his his parents were probably farmers his parents parents were farmers all the way back for generations and Them techniques that you were using the things that you were doing were probably not substantially different in terms of your work Life your daily life then they had been for generations but suddenly during the 17th and 18th century at the time of the Enlightenment a whole Change in Western culture started to take place people started to believe in political freedom They started to set up the institutions as imperfect as they may be today for our Cultural political and economic freedom that give us the possibility of rising up and down the social ladder Also, the idea of the self started to change. What does it mean to define oneself? If someone came up to you on the street and said tell me about yourself Who are you? Well, you might you say your name and what you do for a living what your interests are I'm gonna imagine filling out an online dating profile or something you say go to a matchmaker They say well, what are you? Who are you? The things that you reveal about yourself is what you see in yourself, but it's more complicated than that There's something deeper than this so what I want to do with this idea of the Self-made man or self-making as an idea today. I want to take a look at some of the history of this Where does this come from? What are the best examples of this and then see some of the ways in which it's been corrupted because as I said today the people who are the best exemplars of Self-making are often seen as objects of derision by the popular media by popular culture etc And that's a very damaging thing because in a sense for us for people who actually seek self-improvement for people Who want to be better themselves on all levels of our lives? It's very important that we understand the proper justification for this Why should we embrace this idea and how do in some sense is does one defend oneself? Against such attacks, right and they're myriad today, right? You just take a look at some of the ways that people talk about the idea of self-making as I said in the outset They're culturally devalued People disapprove in many ways. They want to find flaws They want to say oh successful people may have lots of money or lots of fame or lots of whatever it is that they seek But they're unhappy their souls are dead inside, right? And then that's why you get these biographies or these tabloids Detailing all of the lives of the famous people trying to bring them down a notch, but also it's under explicit attack Right, there's a new book out. There's you know certain people in the politics today, right? You've heard this phrase you didn't build that right Well, believe me this isn't just about what some people think about your business if you own a business if you've created a business or your success They think this in a fundamental way about yourself Right there almost to the point of literal determinism They think that what you are who you are is shaped entirely from the outside and whether they attribute credit to that right as Our president does that you didn't build that society helped you build that other people were there etc That kind of collectivist mentality when it turns into the self the individual the person it becomes even more damaging This is the idea which another aspiring president This is the it takes a village concept right that you aren't really who you are you aren't the sum of your choices You aren't who you are because of yourself You're who you are because of your genetics because of your family because of your culture because of your race All of these other Characteristics that you had no control over right so people try to attack this idea. They say it's a myth They they try to look at statistics and say how many people actually rise up from the bottom levels of poverty into the upper echelons of wealth I say that's not the issue right there are some people. It's not statistically likely right But there are there is a lot of mobility in American society from one level of income to another But that's not the issue the issue is what does it mean for the individual? And what are the conditions under which the individual can actually exercise this self-making? What is it about? What does it actually mean? So to give you some of the examples? I wanted to start today with what I think is probably the best example in American history of Self-making Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is a great example of the literature of self-making his autobiography Or what he used to call in his life his memoirs were a document that was very carefully constructed in the Version of an autobiography of course one of the great things that you have as an author is the ability to edit out the Things that you don't like about your life and to promote the things that you do like about your life and Franklin was very conscious of this and His original conception of his memoirs was actually in a letter to his son to try to explain to his son where it was Their family had come from where Franklin had come from so for those of you who may not know as much about Benjamin Franklin The story is pretty inspiring. He was born in 1706 in Boston. He was the tenth of ten children Imagine his poor mother right he was the tenth of ten children and his father Originally had wanted him to go into the ministry But the schooling to do so was too expensive He had been in a Latin school and he had been in a basic grammar school But he was pulled out by the time he was about nine or ten because it was too expensive for the family after all with ten children this is quite an undertaking and His father decided that the best path for young Benjamin in his life was to be apprenticed to his older brother Basically to be sold into an indenture contract to basically become an quasi property of his brother Who was running a print shop at the time and then Benjamin Franklin would learn a trade He would learn how to be a printer and also subsequently because most of the print houses had a lot of the literature The pamphlets that were being imported from Britain and things that were being written he would learn how to be a writer as well and Franklin took to this task despite the friction that he had with his older brother who basically considered him Something less than one of the his hired laborers because after all young Benjamin couldn't get out of his labor contract It was something his father had promised to his brother that he would serve you for an X number of years And then you would release him into the world. Well young Franklin and his older brother who was quite a political radical at the time started to come into conflict the idea of how he was going to run his life was different from his older brothers and eventually at the young age of 16 I believe 1516 he decided in secret that he would run away And he went to Philadelphia and he started his own business. He quickly rose through the ranks He started publishing poor Richard's almanac from which we get so many of the common phrases You know early to bed early to rise makes a man well healthy wealthy and wise etc. Penny saved as a penny earned All these common stock phrases about self-improvement or about diligence and hard work probably come from Franklin probably come from Poor Richard. He also published a number of newspaper articles He had traveled he had traveled to London. He had started to become more prominent He had met with the governor of Pennsylvania He was rising in the world and then at the ripe old age of 42 because of his success as a publisher He retired and there's something to aspire to to be so successful that you can sell your business to a partner and get Residuals basically to get to get payments for your investment such that you can now support what becomes Franklin's next pursuit Scientific career and many people remember Franklin either as the author of the poor Richard's almanac and the autobiography Or they remember Franklin as the politician in the diplomat, but sandwiched in between those parts of his career He was a groundbreaking scientist. He did the fundamental work and experimentation on Electricity right the kite people remember the sentry box the study of electricity He fundamentally characterized the basic field idea positive and negative charge was something that Franklin came up with Clark Maxwell many many years later in the late 19th century said that Franklin had done if you know Maxwell's equations This is basic electromagnetism. I don't actually know this but I pretend to because I know the name So I don't actually understand the theories But Maxwell is very very important to the field of electromagnetism and he said Franklin had basically laid out More than any other thinker in the field. He was like the Newton of the field of electromagnetism So Franklin had this enormously significant scientific career He had come up with a thing that literally would save people's lives the lightning rock right where at the time other Scientists believed that trying to attract charge out of the atmosphere and ground it was going to attract too much lightning to buildings And then it would set them a fire Franklin of course knew the the scientific background of this and he said no This will actually dissipate charge. It will save lives actually ended up ultimately having arguments with other English scientists He was made a member of the Royal Society, which was absolutely unprecedented for a colonial To become a member of the prestigious Royal Society in London after this into the 1750s because of his International acclaim right even the Queen of France had China made with Franklin's face on it because he was so well known in Europe To which Louis was quite disappointed and had himself a chamber pot made with Franklin's face on the bottom He did not so much like his wife being enamored of Benjamin Franklin But because of his prominence and because of his savvy he was appointed as a colonial agent Which meant that he was to represent Pennsylvania and ultimately he also represented Georgia and other colonies in Parliament and so he got involved in politics and he became he became involved at the very heart of the American Revolution Like the other Patriots he had this idea that America should have a kind of self-determination as a nation England was becoming oppressive that the level of taxation the level of interference was becoming oppressive and that they had fundamentally different Ideas about how to protect individual rights the English believed that these were relational that government created rights And then you should just accept them and be happy with them Franklin and the other founders believed no individual rights are what individuals have as a claim against government It's how we tell the government no and so he became involved not only as a colonial agent Later at the Constitutional Convention and then ultimately as a diplomat as an attache basically to France after the revolution he came back to the colonies in 1785 and Shortly thereafter retired for the real retirement, which was only lasted a couple of years before his death in 1790 and In the interim he crafted this biography this autobiography and the really interesting thing to me about this autobiography is Franklin is aware as an enlightenment thinker as someone who had read Locke and Newton and studied the great enlightenment thinkers He was aware of the fact That the way that he portrayed his own personal development could become a model for others In a sense what he had done is he had picked up on the idea of the self-made man Which was just bubbling up into the cultural froth at the time and he created the most effective the most powerful, right? I mean we still read it today. I assign it to students. I know dozens of other people assign it to their students great story Thomas Mellon, right? You guys know the the Mellon Bank ultimately the the bank that's now a well Forget where they've merged, but the the Mellon family Mellon actually was a Thomas Mellon in the 19th century was a poor boy who read Franklin's autobiography Decided to get up off the farm go to Pittsburgh and start his career Which he eventually built into a successful banking career and ultimately the Mellon Bank built itself into a International bank to compete even with the JP Morgan's of the world at the time He was so wealthy that by the time FDR came into office FDR thought he was creating that Mellon was engaged in all kinds of tax evasion and whatnot He became public enemy number one He was he was the or not Thomas Mellon, but his his heirs became public enemy number one They were those dirty bankers that they had to go after right they were one of the most successful families all Because he read this model. He read this idea of what it means to make yourself now There's lots of interesting passages lots of I mean I really I recommend this is a great book to read as well His shorter essays. There's one called the way to wealth Which collects a lot of the poor Richards? Phrases but there's one part of this that I wanted to highlight that I want to focus on today and This is the part He's now talking about his career as a printer and when he was in Philadelphia starting his way to prominence And he notes in this letter to his son It was about this time in the late 1720 so he's in his mid 20s at this point It was about this time I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection And then he details over the next few pages the ways in which he attempted to do this and the really striking thing about this This is this idea moral perfection Who talks about this anymore, right? Aren't we all just flawed? creatures who have all of these Boils and you know nastiness about us and that what we need to do is we need to avoid looking at ourselves in the mirror because After all we're all just you know broken individuals. He says no, I'm going to be morally perfect I'm not just going to a try to attain moral perfection. I'm not even going to try and attain it in the next life Right, which he rejects. He's a deist. He says look it's all about life on this earth, and I am going to try to attain moral perfection How is he going to do this? He's going to do it through conscious rational planning He's going to set out a project of improving himself And so he literally lists out 13 virtues that he's going to attempt to cultivate in himself He lists out a program whereby how he's going to get up what he's going to study how he's going to go about his day What he's going to do to make himself Better into the man that he wants to be and this process this idea of moral perfection as a this worldly Conscious rational effort is what really distinguishes this literature now? Franklin's autobiography after his death was collected these various letters an editor hit upon these and realized wow This is really great stuff. So they put it together There's four different parts of this letter to his son and to others that they put together and they published this as the autobiography in the early 19th century and Early 19th century America was an incredibly ripe period for this idea. It's a politically free nation unprecedented in human history the amount of freedom that individuals had to engage in the kinds of things that would lead to economic success to social mobility, etc were unprecedented and In addition to this initially American culture had a very thisworldly pro human happiness Orientation and so in the 1820s and 1830s a literature starts to develop These books are becoming models people start to imitate Franklin They start to write more and more self-help or self-promotion self-cultivation type books and in the 1830s Henry Clay actually the politician in a speech in Congress by no conscious attention Actually invented the word the self-made man Right. He was being criticized by other senators about some economic policy and he said no no no in America We don't have hereditary aristocrats. We don't have people who were born into a station from which they can never change Right either on the low end or on the high end. What we have he said is a large number of self-made men people who have picked themselves up Basically through their own power risen up the social hierarchy Now in the 19th century this notion also however gets corrupted and That's in part what I want to focus on because this is the great tragedy a Culture in the United States in the 19th century that not only produced inventors businessmen popular entertainers people that could create their own careers Right that could create themselves that could cultivate themselves in the image that they sought Was corrupted and that's why today when we have actual examples because we still retain at least enough political freedom and Economic freedom although ever decreasing by the day That people can still do this and we still retain enough cultural and social freedom that we can still define ourselves We're not a product only of our religious racial ethnic Economic cultural background we can break out of that we can define ourselves But there's this enormous criticism and part of that criticism ultimately arises out of what I think are two false views That developed in the 19th century of what self-making is about now on the one hand one of these false views comes out of the idea of the Christian tradition America as many people know as many people will argue is to one degree or another Deeply deeply influenced by the Christian tradition and it became so deeply influenced during the 19th century There's a great book by historian called the Christianizing of American culture and it happened primarily in the 19th century during the 18th century the Enlightenment The pro-reason pro-life on this or philosophy that adhered at the time that many of Americans If not the majority of Americans believed in was a very Deistic right God sort of made the world and then went off on his own business. He's not intervening with our lives He doesn't want us to follow any creed. He wants us to discover the laws of nature and go about our business Changed from that into the 19th century to a very evangelical Christian-centered culture through conscious intention of the churches at the time and their idea of self-making was very very different Their idea of self-making was premised on the sense that you could make yourself in this world It was not wholly a spiritual sort of narrative, but that you could make yourself in this world Only for one purpose and only because of one particular Problem with the self now, let me take these in reverse order The problem with the self the Christian churches said is that human beings in God's creation are low base selfish materialistic creatures If you want to make yourself if you want to make something of yourself, they said you have to overcome that You have to overcome your inherent flaws You have to rise above the way that God created you you have to somehow Make it to prove to him in a sense that you're better than that you have to deny yourself You have to deny these things The curious part though was that unlike the earlier Christian narratives about the saints and how they Led lives of true faith and ultimately were awarded in the afterlife is that in the 19th century this culture of the Enlightenment had So imbued America with the idea of success in this world that the Christian thinkers actually said being rich is okay right Russell Conwell who was the founder of Temple University Baptist preacher gave a speech He was a public speaker at the time and he gave the same speech believe this There's no television or internet so they had to give the same speech over and over something like 9,000 times in the space of 20 years And it was called acres of diamonds and this I think is the paradigm Example of the Christian idea of self-making acres of diamonds was a speech where a Baptist preacher said God says there is a duty to be rich Why Well because only the rich man can do good works if you're poor How can you do charity? How can you do this altruistic service to fellow your fellow man if you're not rich? So this is the purpose right number one You have to overcome your own base desires and your own materialistic interests and number two the Christian self-maker said you have to do This for a limited purpose the purpose is basically to deny yourself right to build up riches not For your own enjoyment or for the enjoyment of those that you value your spouse your children etc But for others it's only morally good They said to make yourself to make something of yourself to go from rags to riches If you do so in the service of others now the Consequences of this are incredibly damaging. This is why for example people criticize Steve Jobs for not giving away enough of his money Or for not doing so and as public away say as Bill Gates has done in his family And this is why people say you're only good if once you rise to the top you help out those that got you there Right the those who really built that right whether you've been the one struggling sweating Working hard building the business overcoming the obstacles filling out the government bureaucrats forms all these other things You're the one that did all that but when you get to the top they say you've got to pay your pound of flesh Not only to the government now, but also to everyone beneath you The Christian view of self-making in the 19th century context this idea that you have a duty to be rich So that you can do Christian service is incredibly damaging because it takes the self Out of self-making the self-made man is no longer a self-made man. You're almost a vehicle a Vessel through which society can build up wealth and then transmit it to those who need it or who can claim it Now this is very very damaging imagine motivating someone imagine yourself saying well, I could start a business I've got this great idea an entrepreneurial idea. You know someone on the internet hasn't figured out how to sell blank What I mean if I knew an actual example Well, I wouldn't share it with you first of all because I'd be the one that wanted to do it But if I knew an actual example somebody probably would have already tried it But there's a lot of things you know arbitraging debt or or selling different things or figuring out ways of you know Using this technology to make money you look at that you say I've got this great idea to make money But then you realize if the context is if the culture is that's only good for you If you do so in the service of others well when you're up against the wall, right? When you're staying up 18 hours a day doing the coding or the programming or making the business deals What's gonna motivate you? Clearly it's not yourself and so it detaches the self from that process And that's incredibly damaging because I think ultimately what that means is that it doesn't work You can't motivate someone in that extrinsic way in that external way because if you're telling them to improve themselves For someone else they're not getting anything out of it Right, there's a disconnect between the idea of self-making. Why not be one of the recipients, right? Why not let other people be the vessel of spreading the nation's wealth? Well, of course we know the problem is if you just everyone turns around and says this there is no wealth created And we might as well go back to when we all do what we're our parents did There's no social mobility in the sense that you have to do it for others now the other major flaw The other characteristic error that the 19th century produced in the idea of self-making on the one hand was the Christian idea What would be called something like? The duty-based version of self-making you have a duty to improve yourself, right? Even if you don't like it, even if it's not good, even if it isn't one of your values you go do it Right Andrew Carnegie even had this right in his so-called he wrote a piece called the gospel of wealth Andrew Carnegie said basically Wealth has no value except in as much as you can give it to other people Right except that you can endow libraries and schools and do things now. He had a slightly more Pro self idea. He said you got to help those who can help themselves He was opposed to just blanket charity giving people giving people money He said you give them the tools with which they can make themselves, but he's still morally justified it as giving to others now the other error is what I would call the kind of subjectivist the Me generation if you want to call it that the idea of self-making that's all just about the subjective whim Right, you don't like the world as it is. You don't like conditions as they are So you just figure out a way to feel better about it, right? This is the opposite pole This is self-making as a psychological indulgence, right? And this literature also becomes popular in the early part of the 20th century Probably the three most popular self-help books Norman Vincent Peel's think and grow or no he wrote I wrote this down, so I wouldn't forget and I Yeah, the power of positive thinking right Norman Vincent Peel and then Napoleon Hill wrote think and grow rich And then everybody's favorite probably the most famous Dale Carnegie's How to win friends and influence people right and what do these individuals? This is the post Freudian world This is the post Dewey in world so you know Sigmund Freud the whole cycle analysis that it's all a matter of how you think about yourself and repress all of your Oedipal complexes, etc. And it's also doing in the sense that it's not really about the self It's about how you reflect the self in society and this is all really focused on the self It doesn't make the same error that the Christian self-makers do of divorcing the self from the process of self-making But it detaches self-making from any visible external goal Right the idea of this self-making is entirely focused around some psychological characteristic now Of course these self-help manuals still promise riches on the other end think and grow rich right win friends and influence people positive thinking and they had an enormous number of testimonials about oh, I read the power of positive thinking and I beat Muhammad Ali There was a fame famously there was a boxer who claimed that reading this book was what allowed him to defeat Muhammad Ali Now I think probably his left hook or maybe a good jab was what allowed him to defeat But it's all the psychological sense now in some context the Psychological self-making can be a part of proper self-making The problem is that it completely detaches itself from any real values in the world Why should you make yourself? What should you make yourself into? I don't know whatever you want right if you want to make yourself into You know you do some kind of Self-indulgent, you know pop some drugs sit on a hill and figure out who you are That's just as much self-making as say coming up with a great idea Succeeding in the world and accomplishing something for yourself pursuing real values You know health wealth Etc. So there's this divergence in the 19th century by the 20th century What this means is that the literature and the idea culturally of self-making has become very confused Right we see some individuals great athletes for example who pick themselves up from being cut from their basketball team It's that all you know Michael Jordan kind of story you get cut from your basketball team What do you do you go out you practice you work even harder you become more determined you change yourself you adapt to circumstances You figure out what is necessary to your success to your goal right and Michael Jordan's goal obviously was to be the best basketball player ever and Many would argue he probably achieved that at least within his generation Arguments to current players not withstanding Michael Jordan was the best basketball player who ever lived when he retired And he set himself that goal and he did everything necessary to that goal He engaged in a process of rational planning and thinking just like Franklin had suggested now. It's a different goal but then look at what happens a Michael Jordan or Sam Walton or a Steve Jobs gets pulled down by this right on the one hand the people who make the mistake of the psychological self Say oh, but they're unhappy look. He got divorced look. He doesn't have everything. He wants look He's psychologically troubled or they make the example. He doesn't do enough for others He didn't really do this. It's not his responsibility. Somebody else built that right how Michael Jordan can't play by himself, right? He needs four other guys on the court Right this this fallacy that just because other people are involved in mutual trade operations Right, which is basically what a team is you're doing trading skills and and interests in the common goal of victory I always liked that you guys know that quotation from Michael Jordan Although there's no I in team there is in win Right, he told a coach that one's his coach said there's no I in team and he said well There is in when right which is you know if I want to win and I want to be a part of this team I have to focus on myself, but obviously not to the detriment of other players We all know the the characteristic player in in sports who who actually is not so much selfish as self-indulgent Right shows showy show off, and they don't win right. They lost the eye in that sense But whether it's Michael Jordan or Sam Walton or Steve Jobs the culture starts to corrode this away Even though there are still examples of people doing this we aren't like the 19th century if you go back to the early 19th century It's just astounding the literature we could fill this whole stage with books of Examples of literature MacGuffey readers right what they used to give the school children The Horatio Alger stories Right the very famous series of books which were all about little kids You know basically street urchins who pick themselves up and didn't necessarily earn riches but earned respectability They made their way in the world They got a better job than what their their other little friends on the street the little guys running around homeless and whatnot They actually made it out of that and he portrayed that Now the answer that I think We can give the reason why I think this is we can possibly recapture this is That I think I ran has given us the philosopher the novelist I ran has given us an idea of the self That actually is more compatible and in fact Builds on that enlightenment tradition so many of you probably have heard of I ran She wrote the books Alice shrugged the fountain head etc Some of you probably read them, but it's her idea of the self I think that transcends a lot of these errors that builds into the idea of self-making And there's a great line that she has one of her characters and one of her novels and Alice shrugged says And this this is a brilliant example of how how she brings together The idea of the self in a way that hadn't been done since the enlightenment as man She writes is a being of self-made wealth So he is a being of self-made soul and by soul. She simply means character or or you know What you are your consciousness who you are as a person as Man is a being of self-made wealth. He is a being of self-made soul in a sense what she's saying is that human beings By their nature have a very very deep set of requirements of how they have to go about living their lives Number one obviously we have our physical sustenance To attain to right we have to go after proper nutrition Proper physical culture right you need to be healthy you need to do the things that maintain your physical self And you have to do that yourself Right and famously there's another line where she she explains you can share a meal, but you can't digest together Right we can sit down and split a steak I'd love to do that. You know hey somebody wants to break out a steak. Let's go right, but you can't eat that steak and say Oh, I'll digest it for you right. That's an individual operation Ultimately getting that steak right how we acquire it whether we earn the money to go to the store to buy it or whether we hunt it Ourselves or whatever it happens to be right or whether we steal it from lions after they've made a kill I don't you guys have seen this National Geographic video these these bushmen in Africa. They actually steal from lions It's amazing stuff no matter how you do that You have to do that right this is the perspective you ultimately are responsible for your own physical survival Whether that means earning the money by working for someone else in order to pay for the housing the clothing The shelter, you know all of the things the food that that provide your sustenance right the workout sessions Whatever it happens to be Like that she says you have a psychological Self that is also self-made you are in a sense your character Your soul as it were is just as important a thing to cultivate who you are as a person Now this idea that she has fits right in with Franklin's idea that passage that I read I'm gonna calls this moral ambitiousness Right the she calls it the virtue of pride is moral ambitiousness The idea that you set up your own set of values. You're not born with those values All right as a as an infant Barrowing locks phrase. She says you're born tabula rossa. You're born as a blank slate Right, you don't have any values that are automatically given to you you have certain needs Right physical needs psychological needs, etc. But how do you attain those you have to figure that out? And you have to figure out what values you want to attain believe it or not people can pursue different values Right people can have different goals in life. We don't all have to be engineers Or we don't all have to play basketball. We don't all have to do the same thing What I ran says is you have to define what you want Figure out the means of getting it and then pursue it and pursue it not just half-heartedly But as she says with this moral ambitiousness to define what type of person you want to be and To do so with reference not just to the internal as the subjectivists often do right as they say You know just go find yourself man. You need to drop some acid to do that Or if you need to just sit around for a while or do whatever find yourself Right. She says find yourself within the context of something that's actually successful for your life Figure out what values that you can pursue That are consonant with the life of a rational being that you want to pursue Who are you going back to that question? Who are you when you tell someone your career your values your interests? That's what she means and crucially. She says those things are subject to in a sense your dominion You get to have say over those You in a sense are the ultimate arbiter of yourself Who you are who you become and ultimately crucially the self-esteem that you derive from that the the picture of yourself you know if you were to sit down as Benjamin Franklin did and Author an autobiography tell the story of who you are as a person It would be much better than biography because you get to pick and choose What did those crucial moments? Along the path of your life mean to you. When did you choose those values? How did you overcome the background right? Everybody gets those values right your parents give them to you your churches give them to you Your school gives them to you but there's a point in your life Whether it's in your teenage years or your 20s or some people doesn't happen until they're much later in life There's a point in your life where you ultimately have the choice to say is this who I am Do I accept or reject it? Does this make sense for me and Guess who this standard is The standard is not your parents your church your school whatever the standard is you and your view of how that works in reality Reality is the ultimate arbiter. Can you do this and be successful? Can you make a self? That's vibrant or as Aristotle used to say the who the philosopher Aristotle the the idea of flourishing Right, you you don't just want to succeed in life. You want to flourish Right bare physical survival bare career survival, right? There's a lot of people that are just going on autopilot Right, they're healthy enough They're happy enough. They have a decent enough relationship. They have a decent enough set of career goals But are they really flourishing? No, why not? Because those goals those relationships that health all of those things that basically have been determined from the outside for them They have no autonomy True happiness true fulfillment true flourishing and ran says comes from making conscious decisions about all of those issues in our lives So figuring out right we don't all have to figure out the you know the mechanics behind why our automobile works But you have to figure out what kind of car represents what you want to drive You know, are you a sports car guy? Are you an SUV guy? What does that say about me? Right, you don't all have to pursue the same career You don't have to pursue the same career path Some of you may want to go work for a big company some of you may want to be independent businessman, etc But what you have to do is figure out what is appropriate for you? Am I the type of person is this me is myself the type of person that wants to pursue this type of career? Because that process she says is what leads to true fulfillment Now the interesting thing about this and to go back for a moment to the mythology of today or the criticism about the mythology of today what this means is Not as people often criticize that everyone has to become a billionaire successful businessman in the steel You know power or whatever industry that her characters are are in you know She writes characters that are you know one of her characters are the probably the most self-made of all her characters Is Hank Reardon who invents a new metal right in the book Atlas shrug He's a he's a metallurgist and he's a businessman and he goes into the steel industry And he works for 16 years to invent a new alloy. It's just pretty damn cool right, I mean it literally it's lighter cheaper and and More durable than steel it's gonna revolutionize industry in the same way that steel took us out of the Iron Age into the steel age He's going to do the same thing right and this process that she depicts of course is of this Titan industrialist and So people say often when criticizing the idea of self-making. Oh, well everyone can't be Titan of industry Everyone can't be a brilliant metal or just everyone can't be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs But that's not the point and the point is that no matter what Your chosen occupation no matter what level you rise to the more important question is whether it's done on your terms with your values and So there are characters right so there's another character in the novel who basically is an office assistant He's not particularly intellectually brilliant. He's not going to start a new business He's not going to start a new company But he's going to do his job and pursue his values with the same kind of moral ambitiousness That's someone who goes all the way to the top can't What ran's point is is not that in order to be successful. We all have to be billionaires I mean it would be nice. I'd like to have a bunch of friends that are all billionaires Right if you guys all want to make billions of dollars like that's that's a good thing Don't get me wrong, but that's not the measure of success the measure of success if But if that's what you want to go for then that will be your measure of success But for some of you the measure of success may be to be successful in my career to find a good relationship And to have the best physical development possible right you're into bodybuilding so you want to that's your thing Some of you may say I want the best career I can get but for a while. I'm going to pursue another Path I'm going to be a chef I'm going to do this at home at first I'm going to try this out my friends are going to eat a bunch of you know bad meals for a while But I'm getting better and better and better and I'm going to pursue that as a value and ultimately I'm gonna pursue that so that That can be my full-time career Right now you may or may not make billions of dollars doing that. It's about the process It's about identifying what's valuable to yourself that can lead you to success out there in the world and Pursue it no matter what the scope of that is because the scope of all of these things differs Just in the sense that I could you know, I might want to be a world-class athlete Unfortunately It's probably not going to happen. I mean despite what the Huffington post said during the Olympics I don't know if anybody saw this. This was a great piece The Huffington post had all this Olympics coverage and one of the pieces that they had was train like an Olympic athlete And how to and I thought if I could train like an Olympic athlete. Why am I not an Olympic athlete? I can't train like an Olympic athlete. I just like my body can't tolerate it I wouldn't be able to do it, right? But within the scope of your ability if you pursue those values if you identify and define those values selfishly for yourself and That you make that conscious rational process to plan out how you're going to pursue them That is what true self-making is about Such that any of us can say I am my own man Why? Not because I don't own debt to anyone not because I don't have Business that depends upon other people and trading with other people Not because I literally think of myself in a solipsistic way as being divorced from all other people Right, which is the character that that you didn't build that praise upon. That's a character That's not reality reality is of course people trade of course people have Relationships with other people, but when you say I am my own man What you mean is I am my own moral sovereign. I Choose who I am I define who I am and when I don't like it. I can change it and fix it That's what self-making is really about and that's ultimately I Think what we can get back to this tradition of Benjamin Franklin if you read iron rands works And most of her characters have some element of self-making in them defining themselves This is what it's really all about and this ultimately is what can lead everyone Not necessarily, you know, I'm not going to promise you all wealth I'm not going to promise you all you know superior physical development I'm not going to promise you anything all I'm going to promise you is that you can say at the end of the day I am my own man. I am who I choose to be myself Is who I chose? So let's wrap up there. Hopefully there's still some time left for questions Yeah, got some questions couple questions sure go ahead Thanks for speech. I thought that was very helpful So my question is as a part of being self-made a lot of times when you pursue a path You have to not care about what other people think, you know might be your family or might be your friends But you know, when do you draw the threshold because a lot of times, you know You could be going down a path and it might it might not be the right path And there are people who are wise enough to see that but you can't see it yourself, you know How would you how would you balance that indifference factor? Yeah, that's a very very interesting question. It's very very Practically difficult question. There's there is a balance to be drawn between Just saying look, I'm going to define my terms. I'm gonna go ahead You know full steam who cares other people aren't gonna hold me back and on the other side say well There are people who are smarter wiser and more experienced than I am who are going to be along the way as I'm going full steam shouting at me as I go by There's a cliff ahead, right now. How does one balance that I think that the best I mean to just in in general right because a lot of these might deal with concrete specifics But in general I think that the best way of approaching these issues is by approaching them by saying other people do have value to Contribute to my growth the question is how is that process to find do people make a claim on me, right? Your parents say oh, but you know, you're you're hurting the family or your friends say oh We don't want to you know We don't like who you're becoming or whatever versus people who want to make a trade with you Right people who see the value that you're pursuing and want to promote your development Right and there's and you can start to see in a lot of general context There are people who make claims on you who want to hold you back, right? Those are the people I don't you don't necessarily just ignore them But you take what they say and you evaluate it, right? One of the other great things that one of the one of the other great passages I ran has a passage where Essentially this this idea of the self-made man Part of moral ambitiousness and part of the whole idea which I know you're on Brooke is gonna be talking about next Part of the whole ideal of pursuing one's self-interest means never failing to pronounce moral judgment Right to say look you may have an opinion about what I'm doing how I'm pursuing my self-development I have a brain. I have a rational capacity. I can evaluate that given the facts now The people who will contribute and who will actually on this other side have something to say can help you out Etc. We'll see that and we'll want to help promote your self-development And you'll be able to see I think in probably in your own experience the difference between people who want to make a Claim on you and say don't go there You're you're you're surpassing me. You're no longer listening to me Etc. Etc. And people who want to promote yourself about me because they see that it's in their rational self-interest Because the better that you become right. I mean if someone says look this business idea you have You're it's a big risk here, and you're not taking account of this variable, and you say oh wow You know now I can take account of that variable Why are they telling you this well because they see you're a potential trading partner in the future if you're successful if your business Takes off you're a better friend or better business partner or whatever to have Whereas if someone's trying to pull you back if mom's saying oh, but you know don't violate the family traditions etc They're pulling you back What does that mean that means they're trying to stop your self-development, and you have to evaluate those right you have to morally Judge which of those is actually contributing to your self-development and based upon a real standard, right? You say look are your concerns are your you know you're yelling there's a cliff Is there a basis for that in reality, or are you just trying to scare me all right, and that I think is the way to differentiate those types of When should you just plow forward and ignore people because inevitably as you go through this process and business and life and social life Etc. There are always going to be people You know pulling like that, but there's also going to be people who have advice and you know experience will teach a lot Yeah, yeah, there was another question. I Don't know how to feel is yeah the microphones in the back, so I guess we go to the mic Hello, good morning. First of all, thank you for the talk. I really enjoyed it. Thank you if the measure of success is not being a billionaire or not Inventing the iPhone not having a super hot wife. Why do we keep? Referring to to that as as the measure of success aren't we? Fostering new generations of just frustrated youth that they will never be good enough Well, I so this is an interesting question if the standard of success is not necessarily Being a billionaire inventing a new iPhone having a hot wife. I forget the last thing you said But the if those aren't the standard of success Is there a danger in promoting those as the measure of success? Well, I think that is there is something to that right now I want to I want to clarify Making a billion dollars or becoming you know, whatever whatever wealth is I mean, you know in a generation It'll be a trillion just to be wealthy right with the way the money system is going but Not to depress all of you, but but That can be your goal that can be your measure of success if you set that if you're if your chosen goal is I Want to have a level of the success that is you know that puts me at a financial position as such That can be your goal, but it doesn't have to be the problem though as you as you point out There is a cultural standard right and that cultural standard of what is defined as success Can have an effect on what people pursue now if you ask me just off the cuff What is our cultural definition of success? What's probably getting 15 minutes of internet fame and having a sex tape and being famous You know and then being able to launch a career as I don't know. What is it Kim Kardashian does? I mean a career as Famous for being famous or being related to someone famous. I mean Culturally there is a very very important Barometer as it were of what people see as successful right now. Yes money having a hot wife Having a kind of certain kind of fame is what's seen as successful. Why aren't we? championing for example the geeks of Silicon Valley right the the guys and the men and women who actually You know put together the technologies that make the iPhone possible. Why aren't we as a culture? championing the the people who do reach success, but not necessarily in all of these levels right the what a culture measures as its Success what it sees as successful does tell us a lot about the values of that culture holds and right now I'd say ours is pretty mixed right our culture does sometimes value genuine success we see this periodically in certain moments of Cultural episodes, you know in the Olympics people genuinely value the hard work and determination that it takes to attain that level of performance Sometimes people do celebrate the individuals who attain business success, but there's also a lot of Image success false success that doesn't really have a grounding in anything I mean, I don't want to completely despair. It's not all of it is worthless But it tells you that if fame is being pursued for its own purposes Right as opposed to for the achievements that you have that might be a barometer of a bad sign in the culture and the culture championing the success of people who you know people who have All sorts of problems. I mean they're fascinated by the people that the more defective the person is the more famous they become I mean, it's weird right. I mean defective as in like sort of socially defective not not physical deformities But like you know, oh, I've had six wives and I have 27 children and oh, I now have my own reality TV show Right, I mean if you say and that suddenly that turns into success that might be a bad thing right as a culture What we need to do is we need to value true achievement Right life promoting achievements, which the last I checked, you know Having a reality show doesn't do a whole lot to promote one's true achievement Building companies having successful relationships. I mean even something so simple as having a successful family Right. I mean that this is the point that that success can be defined on all levels that it doesn't only Appertain to those on the upper echelons of wealth and notoriety success can be choosing consciously to have a family and Choosing consciously how you're going to rear your children to make them the best happiest most successful children you you possibly can and then Engaging in that process and then seeing those children grow up develop become educated and become successful adults That can be a measure of success. It's one that's not going to get reported in the papers It's one that's not going to become no, you know, no one's going to know about this besides you and your immediate family And your friends, but that can be a tremendous gauge of success I mean after all being a successful parent isn't I'm not one myself I'm not a parent so successful or otherwise, but I'm sure that that can be an incredibly rewarding experience and to the extent that people choose to do that Right rather than the kind of accidental parenthood that we seem so common today, right? They know it just sort of happens and I sort of raise the kid or whatever But to choose to do that as a value can be incredibly rewarding possibly more so than making those millions of dollars if that's what you value Right, so it it the cultural side there is a kind of cultural barometer there that I think you've identified But at the same time We as a culture we have to celebrate the success and promote the idea of success on a rational model Right, we have to you know, you just instead of saying oh, yeah, what did Kim Kardashian do say? Oh, hey, did you hear about this great businessman? Right or oh, hey, did you hear about this? You know my friend who's really doing a great job parenting or hey, you know my friend who? Who just got promoted or whatever I mean to actually promote that culturally Right would would do a lot would do a lot to bring back that idea of self-making as a true rational pursuit And so is that that's all we have time for okay, so thank you very much gentlemen. I appreciate I if you more questions