 But again, that's on a less depressing note. It's been very interesting to hear you define the philosophy in quite overtly Aristotelian terms. And I was curious, in speaking of morality, do you believe that ethical values are objective and universal? And if so, how can they be discerned in the Aristotelian or Thomas's way, perhaps, on the basis of how they contribute to human flourishing or in a completely different fashion? No, I think that is the basic approach. It has to be in a sense an empirical approach, but based on first principles. And I think they are objective. That is, I think that if you evaluate human history, if you look at individuals, if you look at human nature, and this is kind of the first principle approach, there are certain things that lead to human flourishing and the certain things that retract from human flourishing or lead to human happiness and retract from human happiness. And so the first principle is, one is individual human life is what matters. Morality is about my life. Morality is about your life. My need to survive and to thrive, your need to survive and to thrive. And then the second question is, and this is an important empirical question, but it's a foundational question, what leads to human thriving? What leads to human survival? Can we objectively show that there's something in particular that enhances human survival, nevermind thriving? And if you look at the species over the last 100,000 years, there's one attribute that we have that defines who we are and defines our capacity to change the world around us to make it livable for us. Because in nature, as an animal equal to all other animals, we're pretty pathetic. We're slow, we're weak, we have no claws, we have no fangs. I mean, you put yourself in front of a sabertooth tiger and you lose, right? But the sabertooth tag is in a museum and you're here, with communicating thousands of miles away by video conference in the comfort of our homes with air conditioning here, even in the UK, probably some air conditioning. And we're thriving as a species, the billions of us, we live all over the world in every climate possible. How is any of that achievable? How did we beat the sabertooth tiger? How did we hunt down the bison? How did we create? Well, it's only one thing and that is the use of our mind. Reason is what defines us as a species and reason is what allows us to survive as individuals. Without thinking, we cannot survive. Now, it's true, not everybody thinks, but those of us who drift on other people are drifting on other people's thinking. I didn't come up with the iPhone, but I benefit from the fact that Steve Jobs did. And I use my think to create something else, which then provides me with the income to be able to benefit from Steve Jobs's thinking. But at the end of the day, the way human beings survive, the way people thrive, the way people live as a human being, and evil, the way people can experience spiritual values is through the use of, and create spiritual values. It's through the use of reason. You cannot write a symphony without being a thinker. It's not just that it just emotes out there. It's a process. And it's a process based at the end of the day on human reason. So reason is man's basic means of survival and reason is the foundation of any ethics. So the idea that reason is at the base of human survival is not, it shouldn't be controversial. And that's an objective fact. So as an objective fact, now the issue is, so for Ayn Rand, if you had to boil ethics down to one idea, it's think, think for yourself. So if you think about Ayn Rand's developing virtues, actions that lead to values, moral actions, right, that lead to values, then her virtues are rationality, think, and all its implications. Independence, think for yourself. Honesty, don't allow falsehoods into your thinking because you're corrupting your thinking. Justice, think about the value of other people to your life and treat them accordingly. But it's think, are they good? Are they bad? Evaluate, judge. So justice is about judging who is good and who is bad and treating them accordingly. You know, productiveness, right? You've got to create the material needs that your life requires. Your body requires for food, but also your spirit requires for everything else. Think and act, right? Produce, production is thinking, inaction. And take all this seriously. You know, act based on what you think, integrity. And finally, take morality seriously. Aristotle called pride the queen of the virtues. And it's true, pride is the idea of taking morality seriously. It's living the best life you can live for yourself. All, every one of those can be objectively shown to contribute to human life, to contribute to survival and to thriving as an individual human being. So it's a inductive truth. It's a truth that comes from the evidence of reality. And in that sense, it follows the risk of killing tradition. I just think that she was more rigorous. She had 2,000 years on Aristotle, of human experience, of history, of an industrial evolution, of the enlightenment, of all the negatives of Christianity and the negatives of altruism and other philosophers. And I think she improves on the Aristotelian model. But the essential idea of the standard is individual happiness, individual flourishing and thriving. And the means, reason is very similar to Aristotelian Aristotle. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now, 30 likes. That should be at least a hundred. I figure at least a hundred of you actually like the show. Maybe they're like 60 of the Matthews out there who hate it, but at least the people who are liking it, I wanna see a thumbs up, there you go. Start liking it, I wanna see that go to a hundred. It all it takes is a click of a thing, whether you're looking at this. And you know the likes matter. It's not an issue of my ego. It's an issue of the algorithm. The more you like something, the more the algorithm likes it. 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