 When Fred invited me to come up to San Francisco and to speak with you, I asked him, what might I talk about in your opinion that could be most useful to this group? Rather than simply select some topic that might be on my mind, I wanted to see if I could be most usefully relevant. And he gave me a request easy in some ways, very difficult in others. He said, well, he consulted with some colleagues to get some feedback, and he said, here's the word, be personal. I think that meant don't discuss ideas in the abstract, don't discuss the world, don't discuss strategies, say something about your personal evolution relative to liberation, hence the title liberation at personal scenario. Well, that was for me rather interesting and awesome, because any life that's progressing at all, the very nature of human development can be understood from the perspective of liberation. The whole process of growth is a process of opening doors to new possibilities. So that anybody who is engaged in the process of growing or trying to open up to the possibilities of life could give a talk called Liberation of Personal Scenario and it would fit. So I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a little bit random and I hope not too scattered, as I share with you some memories and observations relative to liberation, libertarianism, personal evolution and the like. And I don't think that too many of you will be surprised if I tell you that the story began when I read The Found Head at the age of 14, when living in Toronto, and fell in love with the book and felt that it spoke to me in the most intimate way possible and proceeded to drive my family to distraction being uninterested in talking about anything else. But something very fateful happened in Toronto in the 14th year of my life, which was this. My mother became concerned that perhaps The Found Head was becoming an obsession. God forbid. And there was this friend of the family, a teacher, who my mother thought was an intellectual and might be invited to offer some kind of judgment on whatever influence her son had fallen under. So this lady came to visit us. She hadn't read The Found Head and I was glad to give her a synopsis. And then I invited her to read Howard Rourke's courtroom speech, preparatory to us having a real good discussion. My mother, perhaps I should mention, understood none of this. She was not a reader, but she just said something was up and what she wanted to know was, is it good or bad for her son? As mothers I want to ask, right? So when the visitor finished the courtroom speech, she said to me in the most pleasant, easy matter-of-fact way possible, well, this is very interesting. Of course it's not new. There is a name for this philosophy. And I said, really, what is it? And she said, it's called anarchism. I debate that should I tell this story or not, but I want to give aid and comfort to a viewpoint I do not share. I will take it, pin my hopes on the total picture emerging clearly. Anyway, I can't explain why, but I knew that this was untrue, meaning that this was something new and that she was wrong. I didn't know how to prove this. So what I did was the next day I skipped school and I went down to a branch of the Toronto Public Library and I walked up to one of the librarians and I said, would you please show me how to find a book on anarchism? I have to find out what anarchism is. And fate directed me or someone directed me to an interesting little book by the British philosopher Burton Russell called Proposed Roads to Freedom, a study of anarchism, socialism and syndicalism. And I read the book that day in the Toronto Public Library and I became confirmed in my understanding that that was not indeed what the Fountainhead was teaching. I didn't yet know what politically the Fountainhead was teaching, which is a funny story in itself, but I somehow knew it was not the chapter on anarchism in Burton Russell's book. But the reading was very fortuitous because it really turned me on to reading about political philosophy and because the first book happened to have been written by a philosopher it turned me on to reading more of Burton Russell. So when I was 14 I discovered philosophy and in the same year I discovered psychology and in the same year I failed second year high school because this is the very first time I have ever been applauded for failing high school. It's justified my whole trip to San Francisco. Well, what happened was that I was so mesmerized by the world that it opened up to me that how could my poor high school teachers be expected to compete? Trying to get me to learn French, you know, or geometry. So I became a master forger at the age of 14 because I had to have these notes from my mother explaining that I was sick. And the joke is that nobody ever found out what I did. I was absent from school an awful lot and I wasn't playing around. I mean, I wasn't lazy. I was down on the Toronto Public Library reading and reading and reading but I failed school. Unfortunately there was a special school where you could take four years of high school in one year. It was for people like returning from the war. This was 1943 and people coming out of the service and policemen who wanted to go back to school. And it's a special crash course. And I was so mortified, I begged my mother to let me go there and knock off high school. And she said, if you failed second year, how can you do four years in one? And I said, trust me, I will do it. And I did. And in fact, I got the highest grades I ever got up to that time. But that was faithful for me because through these chain of events the whole world of philosophy and psychology opened to me. So that was the beginning of a kind of liberation because it meant, and this theme will become important in a few minutes, new choices, new possibilities for me. Now, jumping ahead five or six years, in my adolescence, most of the intellectually inclined people that I knew were socialist or communist in Toronto. And I was convinced that there was no excuse for the evil of any group forcing its ideas or beliefs on any other group. And that's clearly what was entailed in any species of socialism or syndicalism or communism. And from that point of view, anarchism seemed very logical because it seemed the only alternative that didn't entail coercion. What was completely absent from my education and what I never found anywhere, neither in discussions with relatives nor in my reading, was the concept of capitalism. Meaning it wasn't even an option. The whole idea of limited constitutional government or a Jeffersonian democracy or the idea of a government that would be more or less committed to the protection of individual rights wasn't raised and dismissed. It was as if no such system or anything like it had ever been known. So I was wondering what in hell does I and Rand believe in? Politically, that became my obsession. I somehow knew and don't ask me why she was not an anarchist. So I wrote her a letter. And I tell her how much I admire their books and I said, could you please tell me what political system do you believe in? Certainly not capitalism, but what is it then? Because all I ever heard about capitalism was imperialism and colonialism. Can you imagine your only knowledge of capitalism coming from Marxists? Well, that was the condition of a lot of people in the 1940s of my age. Some of you, no doubt. So she didn't answer that letter, but she answered another letter a little bit later in which she said, if you're the gentleman who wrote me from Canada, I hope by now you have learned that I am an advocate of total, free, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism. Capitalism underscored an ink twice. Now, by now I had really absorbed the philosophy of the Fountainhead very well and I struggled with what this could mean because I really did not know what capitalism was and I had no clue as to how to find out. It's now 1949. The only people I knew to ask would be either giving me a Marxist perspective or a very cynical, pragmatic, non-ideological perspective that would not really illuminate what I wanted to know. I was so heartened by her writing me this little note that I took my courage in my hands and now I wrote her a long letter asking some questions and explaining some of her mistakes. Challenging her. That's a slight exaggeration for the purpose of humor but challenging her on certain issues. And my letter intrigued her because she felt the points I was making were valid. For example, I called her on some of the sentences in the original version of With a Living which she cut and removed in a later edition of With a Living. Stuff like that. But the letter impressed her and in February of 1950 while going to UCLA I get a letter from her long, wonderful, terrific, exciting letter beginning to introduce me to what is capitalism. And saying if I had more questions perhaps a personal meeting could be arranged and let me give her my phone number and perhaps she'll call me. And she told me, I cannot undertake to educate you from scratch. So you have to do something on your own. There's two books I want you to read before I talk to you again. There's three Hazlets, Economics and One Lesson and Isabel Patterson, The God of the Machine. And I can see some of you smiling and nodding. Well, coming out of my background it was incredibly exciting to read these books and get introduced to a way of thinking about social issues for which nothing that I had heard at home, nothing that I had read had remotely prepared me. But mostly what I got was like a rough sketch of a vision. I didn't feel complete or finished with the issue at all. But I was very turned on, very intellectually excited. So last week of February in 1950, one night I'm very tired and I go to bed early and at 9.30 at night the phone rings and I'm really feeling groggy. And I stumble over on the telephone and I say hello and this thick Russian accent says, is this Mr. So-and-so me? I says, yes. And she says, this is Ayn Rand speaking. And that's how we had some unfortunate experiences many, many years later that you may have heard a word or two about. But they are really irrelevant now because now I want to recreate a very happy period and one of my differences from Ayn is that I'm able to keep those two issues very separate and I'm not going to rewrite history and allow the unhappy things that happen later cause me to be negative about some of the great experiences that happen when I was younger. Anyway, we're talking, I go there a week later and I won't take the time to tell you the whole story of how we met and became friends and then everything else. But on that, I should have constructed that sentence in some other way. This evening is very exciting and we're talking all over the map about ethics and literature and everything but capitalism which is my official reason for being there. Finally it's getting close to midnight and I started asking her about capitalism. And I still don't quite have the vision of what is the system? What is it? Something was because the Haslip book which I think is outstanding it's still I think the greatest book to begin with of anything I've ever read and to reread several few years I didn't have what I needed philosophically yet and that's important to where I want to go tonight. So she said I'll give you the case for capitalism that isn't in those books. It's really contained in the fountain head although I'm writing a longer novel now of which one of my purposes is to provide a moral or an ethical defense of capitalism. But she says the principle is in the fountain head and you understand the fountain head and you'll get this. She said do you believe that the human being has the right to exist? As just by now one of the leading authorities in the fountain head of course I drew myself and I've said this right of course I do. She said do you understand that the right to exist means the right to exist for one's own sake? I said with as much poise as I could command Mr. Rand of course. If he doesn't have the right to exist for his own sake then basically he's existing by permission. She said the political implementation of that concept is capitalism. And I said oh and it was like a tremendous light going on because everything else that happened reading von Mises, reading von Bauer all the studying I did later was a footnote to that moment. It was an electrifying experience because it's not that easy for most of us to date a particular moment in our life when a massive issue becomes illuminated for us. Usually it's a slower, subtler process extended over time. But since my primary interest was philosophical, ethical rather than narrowly political or economic, that moral perspective was supremely important and what I needed in order to be able to fit capitalism into the moral vision that had so inspired me in the fountain head. In other words I saw the obvious linkage. It's obvious after it's made obvious between capitalism on the one hand and individualism and enlightened self-interest on the other hand. It was that integration that suddenly made the advocacy of a free market and of a social system organized around the inviolability of individual rights as a natural consequence of a way of looking at man, at humankind at what is the good of what is life all about so that for me capitalism, the advocacy of capitalism from the beginning was charged with moral energy. It felt like a crusading issue. It felt like a fighting issue in the most intoxicating and exciting sense because it wasn't I don't want to demean practicality. I don't want to demean human comfort. But it was not simply a system that worked better than the alternative systems. It wasn't only a system that produced goods and services more effectively that allowed a more efficient flow of human energy. That was all true. But what was important for me was that it was the one system fit for human consumption. You see. Now at that time, libertarianism didn't exist as a word in the sense that it exists now. And shooting ahead a number of years we would talk about the fact that capitalism was an unfortunate word for two reasons perhaps. One, because Marx had used it as an abusive term to describe a market economy. And two, because it was purely an economic term as it was used. And there was no word to name in a single expression the concept of a society organized on the principle of the inviolability of individual rights in which the exclusive function of government would be the protection of rights with the obvious corollary of a separation of state and economics. So when the word libertarianism first began to be talked about I liked it and I didn't for an odd reason. I liked it because I would have taken any word the vacuum the need for a word to name that concept was really important. And I didn't on almost literary ground this was before any of the differences between her and certain libertarians that arose later such as libertarianism encompassing those who didn't believe in any form of government however limited those issues arose only later her first objection strangely enough was to me puzzlingly literary she found the word awkward and at that time there was nothing really to debate about because there was no libertarian movement there was no libertarian party and I just welcomed the word because I knew a word is desperately needed and by the way I have to say this because the libertarian party does include both those who believe in limited government and those who don't accept the validity under any circumstances of an institution of government that when I speak of libertarianism I understand by it a social political economic system based on individual rights in which the sole and exclusive function of government is the protection of those rights is a legitimate function in my view okay so what is important for me was that in the years that followed and of course this was true for a good many of you I would guess the advocacy of capitalism or what we later called libertarianism was part and parcel for me of objectivism it was part and parcel of a comprehensive philosophical system of which it was a part it didn't exist in a vacuum and we had a lot of arguments with supporters of capitalism even people we liked and admired Ludwig von Mises would be the most extreme example certainly someone that we both admired enormously or Mr. Haslip being another and some of what we argued about is relevant to certain trends in libertarianism today we said look in the 19th century we passed through a period where among intellectuals in the western world capitalism had demonstrated its supremacy socialism was perceived to be refuted disqualified and passe you go back to the mid 19th century the practical argument for capitalism has already been demonstrated more and yet the world has turned away more and more in the 20th century back to war totalitarianism while it's exceedingly important to know the practical defense of capitalism it's not adequate you need underneath that a moral defense you need a philosophical defense you have to deal with why we were unable to keep it the first time around and if you don't address that issue any temporary victories will always be delicate will always be fragile now in my estimation that's relevant for libertarians to think about today because following the ran brandon break following the explosion nbi a lot of people went their separate ways and there was a lot of backlash against objectivism against iron rand a lot of it thoroughly understandable and some of it unfortunately mistaken there was a lot in my estimation of throwing out the baby with the bathwater by that I mean there were elements in what we had been saying was continuing to say following our break that would have antagonized anybody she was personally autocratic in the extreme she was doctrinaire in a way that didn't support the free exchange of ideas she was ferociously obsessed with personal loyalty in other words she was very much like most people are who are pioneers of new intellectual movements and as they get a little bit older they become more and more obsessed with protecting the true body of faith there's nothing as I later learned unique about her faults in the world of my own profession of psychology for example you look at the last years of a man like Wilhelm Reich or you look at Sigmund Freud with his rings that he gave to his seven disciples who were to be the guardians of the true faith I realized that a lot of experiences that for me I regarded as boy experiences were really like an archetype of what tends to happen in intellectual movements when a person has had to maintain a solitary position against terrific opposition for decades you do get bitter you do get suspicious you get very very cranky and the fact that you may be a genius doesn't necessarily improve the quality of your disposition or your way of dealing with your friends so what I mean that's all true and it's important if you're a friend but it's not important in the wider sense to the intellectual movement that interests us right? What concerned me in the later years was the idea of libertarians who really thought that they could fly with one precept non initiation of physical force as if the only thing you needed to go into battle with in addition to your practical economic arguments was the idea that no individual or no group may initiate the use of physical force against others now no one rates the importance of that concept higher than I but you can't change the world with that concept of intellectual vacuum you can't divorce it from the concept of individual rights because without the concept of individual rights you will not be able to answer somebody who says why can't you force people if the welfare of the world or society or the common good requires it what makes the individual so bloody sacred what's so sacrosanct individual's voluntary choice when the welfare of humanity is an issue so the logic of the interrelatedness of ideas obligates us to be philosophical thinkers whether we are inclined to be or not to some extent at least we don't have to become masters of epistemology or metaphysics or metathics but we have to have some grasp of the philosophical foundations necessary to defend freedom to defend our view of individual rights or we are going to be a very very limited effectiveness and the fact that right now we are moving through a period of history where there seems to be what will I call it a pro-capitalism swing a pro-freedom swing a disillusionment and suspiciousness about government swing I don't think any of you need to be convinced by me that swings of that kind can change very very easily I don't see any radical change of anybody's philosophical beliefs or convictions about anything in the last two or three decades I think there's a growing disenchantment with what socialist governments have achieved around the world and there's certainly a growing disenchantment with our past democratic or republican administrations so there is a kind of public mood which is more pro-free enterprise but I am not aware that it represents any kind of fundamental rethinking or re-challenging of the ideas behind the new deal of the welfare state and if someone has evidence to think that something radical has altered in people's thinking I would welcome hearing about it because I think that the great battle of fighting for individualism enlightened irrational self-interest and the absolute inviolability of individual rights is as major, essential and formidable as it ever was it's just that the climate is a little bit more receptive right now and I know that there's one issue that some libertarians have felt queasy about or uncomfortable with and that's anything that sounds like taking on altruism and taking on that holy sacred cow I am personally convinced that we have to be willing to deal with that issue because it's inseparably tied to all the other issues that presumably we share convictions about if you really believe that a human life is an end in itself and not a means to the ends of others if you really are convinced that you are an end in yourself and so is the person sitting beside you you can't simultaneously believe that the person only has a right to exist if he serves others and if you really believe consistently with a full understanding of what it means that you are an end in yourself then you are at odds with a very long tradition you are definitely not in the mainstream and I think we have to have the common sense matter of fact honesty to appreciate the fact that we are trying to advance an idea that is very daring very radical, very revolutionary and very imperfectly understood I think that the idea that a human being has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is truly as radical an idea in 1987 as it was when it was first expressed in public and not significantly better understood a person has a right to the pursuit of happiness now I think making a very large jump that is why there is so much nonsense about this television show coming up called America I have no idea whether this TV movie is going to be any good or not I suspect it isn't but I think I think that the attacks on it in advance happening is scandalous disgraceful and very very relevant and to bring this issue in a focus I want to ask you one question picture that the year is 19 late 1939 or early 1940 and imagine that somebody makes a movie and wants to show what America would look like occupied by the Nazis most of America was isolationist of that time most of America didn't want to get involved in Europe at that time I don't think of the people who are screaming their heads off today over this film would be screaming their heads off then because Russia and communism have always enjoyed a special privileged position with regard to American intellectuals they have never been looked at by the same set of the Nazism was looked at they may in the abstract say that both are inhuman totalitarian systems in the abstract but communism is so inexorably linked to the concept of the public good the common good service to mankind all the precepts of altruism that it has never been held by most American intellectuals accountable or answerable for its atrocities in the way that other fascist totalitarianism have been and I don't think we can ever understand the special rules the special exemptions made for Russia if we don't understand the supreme importance ethically of the whole issue of individualism versus self-sacrifice or egoism versus altruism or however you want to conceptualize that issue but I'll assume we all understand what I'm talking about so what I want to suggest to you if we're interested in liberation is that we can separate from other features of a philosophy we may not fully share we may want to separate from the personality of Ayn Rand from the behavior of any of her exponents but there are certain core ideas which I don't know how we can separate from and still be meaningfully libertarian and I would love to see at future conferences dialogue on this issue on what it is what is it that we are saying when we're saying we're libertarian now as Dr. Hasbur said in his talk earlier today there's lots of areas of legitimate disagreement among libertarians who agree in principle an agreement on principle on the broad precepts of libertarianism leaves lots of room for disagreement about matters of law foreign policy and the like but I think there are some issues which we cannot defend the concept of freedom or libertarianism or free market a pragmatic defense has been tried it didn't work the first time around I'm absolutely convinced it won't work the second time around I was wondering what could I say that might be useful because progressive in the last several years coming back to the personal I've moved into a different kind of libertarianism and now I'm speaking slightly ironically I've moved into the territory of personal liberation when I left Objectivism or the institution of the final Brandon Institute and went back into the practice of psychotherapy because psychotherapy has a lot to do with libertarianism interestingly enough and that's what I thought would be worth clarifying and that's for me the same passion that led me to wanting to fight for capitalism is very much present in my approach to psychology and psychotherapy because what is libertarianism concerned with libertarianism is concerned with the external blocks to individual self-realization psychotherapy is concerned with the removal of the internal blocks both are concerned with that great issue freedom to choose and I've long been fascinated by the parallelism between those who are concerned to remove external obstacles coercive obstacles with those who are interested in optimizing the possibility psychologically a free choice because what I find very interesting is to think about the fact that wherever you look in human experience there is a common meaning to the concept of progress or evolution whether you think politically technologically evolutionarily or psychologically if you are talking in evolutionary terms for example and you say one species is more highly evolved than another do you know what that comes down to in any given situation more options are possible to the more evolved species than to the less evolved species the more evolved the species the more things its representatives can do in any situation the more possibilities exist for it the options available to an amoeba are exceedingly limited those to a earthworm far greater those to a chimpanzee almost a measurably greater and those to a human greater again if you think about technology what does evolution or progress mean it means more choices giving people more choices take one of the greatest technological inventions in the history of the human race one of the most benevolent, benign kindly loving, warm and compassionate the invention of effective birth control now what was so great about this bit of technological achievement look what it did in terms of human choice look how it affected the possibility to choose your lifestyle and your life if you own a car you have some more choices and if you don't own a car in most parts of the world not all but in most now in psychology if a person is anxious or depressed or inhibited or repressed or blocked or always got headaches or he's got certain self-doubts which render him less effectual by far than he could be and we're able to assist him through working with him or her, what are we doing we're not taking away the ability to have to be limited but we're given choices where choices didn't exist in any practical sense before so for example a person is so depressed he doesn't go out of bed in the morning doesn't want to go to work, doesn't want to do anything to get rid of the depression you don't take away the ability to stay in bed that day but you give a choice, now you could get out and have a good time so you give a choice now what is the fight for political freedom all about it's giving people more options, more choices that's one of the many reasons why I so much admire Dr. Freeman's film series free to choose because that is the issue free to choose but why is free to choose so important why is it for me the very same issue whether I'm arguing with somebody about capitalism or thinking about how to help somebody with emotional repression it's the same issue it's how much you care about individual life it's how it's always an issue of what you think about man or woman as an individual what you think about an individual's right to his or her own life whether or not that issue has moral and emotional charge for you now if it doesn't and I believe that for most of us it does I don't think you folks are really here because you are your heart is really in practical politics I cannot believe that my guess is that to varying extents you have very strong feelings about these issues and you kind of enjoy being part of a crusade that feels worthwhile to you and worth fighting for is that a correct assumption on my part so I think that we are crusaders and I think it's one of the most exciting and satisfying things in the world to be providing we know what we're doing I don't mean hysterical crusaders or inappropriate off the wall messianic crusaders as I've heard one or two libertarians or objectivists have been known to be I'm not talking about that but I am talking about people who have a strong moral passion who have convictions about the good for human beings and are willing to put their energies on the line so what I wanted to share with you is aside from a small bit of autobiography not much I'll be sharing more later but not for a while is inviting you to think about the philosophical underpinnings of your passion think about if it isn't an arbitrary proposition hanging in a vacuum no initiation of force what view of human beings what view of life view of reality do we need to support libertarianism and don't we want to be identified not just with the final product namely the advocacy of liberty but with the whole moral vision aren't we in a certain sense moral visionaries even when we're discussing the most practical pragmatic issues and don't we maybe sometimes need to remind ourselves of that to reach inside ourselves and remember the internal considerations that brought us here I'm convinced the more conscious they are the more effective we can be I've nowhere said everything that I want to say but time is running short and I'll be very frustrated if I can't have a little bit of exchange in terms of questions and get some activity going back and forth so I'm going to interrupt myself just so we can talk back and forth a little bit ok thank you for your attention I really was hoping that I'd have to deal with some questions because I like feedback I like the sense of who I'm talking to what are your thoughts or reactions to what I'm saying you want to give me an argument, give me an argument you want to ask a further question fire away, yes see that things that we aren't doing that we aren't outsiders and that libertarian ideas really are you know a shallow objective move what kind of evidence is required of that I screwed you totally ok let me try to explain in more depth I think a great deal is going our way or rather I think libertarians are doing a great deal that is fantastic in terms not just of the party but of the think tanks the magazines the spreading of the ideas but now I'm not talking about what self conscious libertarians are doing because I think they're doing a great deal that is tremendously valuable and important so that's not my focus my focus here is a different one I am saying that what I'm seeing is a lot of practical disenchantment with quote big government but I don't see anybody rethinking whether he or she personally wants handouts I don't see any rethinking I mean why is it so hard for politicians to do serious budget cutting I don't think it's just I think that one of the reasons is is because everybody wants the cut somewhere else you know very few people say no we shouldn't cut the budget that's not the problem I'm saying now as I say there could be signs that you see because you probably followed this more closely than I do and then maybe somebody write me a letter tell me what I should be reading what I'm not seeing I mean I would love to be wrong on this point I mean I think it's encouraging I think it's exciting I think it's a fantastic moment in history to be a libertarian and I also think that if we don't take appropriate advantage of it the winds of change can sweep it away yes it will come as no surprise that I very much share Rand's perspective and to remind you of an extremely condensed version of how I would approach this without the concept of individual life you can't even derive at the idea of importance or unimportance in the human realm that the whole concept of the good or the bad or of value genetically bears a certain logical relationship to the value of life which it presupposes and that you can't even make sense of those concepts you can't even make them fully intelligible without first getting into the question of why do human beings need such concepts as morally important or unimportant good or bad desirable or undesirable and for further details of course I would refer you to Rand's own writings and if you want to know how I explain it read the chapter called egoism and honoring the self for what I think is probably the clearest summary in one place of my answer to that question but it is the great question it is the great question and I don't think anybody thinks that's enough to say well because I say so it isn't that we drag those philosophical arguments into every encounter all the time when we're talking we're not putting everything out that's in our mind behind but we have to know we have to know because sooner or later we will be held accountable for our ability or inability to answer those questions yeah for me one of the more serious trends that I see right now that I'm very disturbed about it's a religious right and I'm wondering what your comments are I understand that you're not terribly enthusiastic about it well I am only I am only enthusiastic about it in one respect it's a magnificent opportunity for us to separate ourselves from a group with whom we are sometimes identified so that we can be smeared I'm hope I'm not over optimistic I am unable to persuade myself that this represents a serious threat to anybody it's very interesting I think it was Time Magazine gave an interesting report even among people who label themselves religious fundamentalists who are part of the so-called moral majority when it came down to do you personally favor legislation to enforce your particular viewpoint somewhat to the surprise of the time pollsters a clear majority were against it even though they had strong personal feelings about it in other words there are still some very interesting what should I call it American impulse that says let us not allow religion and politics to spend too much time in bed together that concern still appears to be there I hope I'm reading the situation accurately yes the favorite thing I love to do is to say if you didn't have this problem now I know you've got it but if you didn't have it what do you imagine you could be doing this week you understand you're a person to make a list I know you cannot do that because you've got this driven problem and after we have a list I'll say now look I know we haven't solved the problem yet but even with the problem is there anything you could do this week that could improve the situation and you know nobody has ever said to me in my career absolutely nothing so in other words what I'm really saying is part of the task is to alert people to the fact that choices exist that their self-concept prevents them from seeing they're saying well I'm scared so I can't do this so part of what you want to do is device means to help them to become aware that even at the present time there are options and choices you see and so that is process number one process number two is to first get them to assure me in my office that they absolutely can't do something like sentence completion then get them to do something that they swore to me they couldn't do because when they see that they've just done something that they told me they absolutely couldn't do we now have a better context in which to discuss what's possible okay well to do this would be a trap for me I so much love talking on this subject I could be answering you for the next 10 minutes yes part of the reason for people's thoughts on these matters I'm sure they're a number may lie in the fact that the collective has endured for century upon century whereas individual human lives have been snuffed out by our biology in a matter of a few tens of thousands of days do you think that perhaps the prospect of greatly extending hopefully individual human lives might increase the tendency of people to value individual human life no I'll tell you why no, of course not I'll tell you why, relax I'm going to tell you why, it's very simple point one individuals don't last a long time and collectives don't last a long time hold it individuals arise and new collectives arise the collective that existed 100 years ago didn't last a long time with a handful of exceptions it's dead this is now a different one same way with individuals if I say the individuals existed for thousands of years that's a metaphor it's an abstraction individuals come into existence and go out of existence groups consist of individuals who come into existence and go out of existence now unless you're talking about forms of life that have lived a long time which is not too exciting an argument, if you're talking about human collectives then I think that you will if you don't solve anything else the problems will become worse and I'll tell you why because unless you are simultaneously developing interplanetary travel the problem will then be what are we going to do people have to get out of the way to make room for the next generation so I think we'll have some new very exciting problems see I don't when we have a life extension I think this I've at least failed to persuade you of my core point you think technology is going to do it it didn't do it in the 19th century and it won't do it in the 23rd you know why not because because so long as there is human envy so long as somebody is sore because you're better looking or have a higher IQ or earn more money and technology is not going to eradicate that except if it killed us all so long as there is human envy so long as there are differences in human energy and human ambition and human talent you are always going to have to deal with the socialist mentality whatever its name may be always you will always have to defend the individual and saying well what do you care you know we'll freeze you and next time around you'll be rich and good looking I don't think I don't think that'll fly Eric with respect one more question I really have to disappear Tom which I do how do you respond the desire the very quick desire to be able to incorporate these values and go that's why nothing will work without the concept of individual rights that's why it's the pillar without which the whole structure collapses and that's why I know there are libertarians who don't regard rights as an essential part of the argument and I think they are misguided at best because everything you're saying is true there's a great problem there and you have to be able to say people want to practice private altruism fine you do not use physical violence to compel some people to act out other people's altruistic impulses you see you know I was once invited let me to end with this thought I was once invited to address menace of people in Los Angeles and they asked me to speak on something very strange sounding called libertarianism menace by the way is an organization in case you don't know it of people who have an IQ they're in the top two percentile you'd never know it in political discussions and any of it after they wind up of the question period at a moment like this ladies and gentlemen somehow we've gotten talking about utopias or visions of the future so I said whenever people talk about utopias I have only one question I'd like to ask and I'll leave that question with all of you I said to them because everything else is important no doubt but it's also a footnote I said whatever utopia you're dreaming up for the future I just want to know one thing about it is it going to be a utopia in which some people have the political right to impose their theories of the good on other people if it isn't we could have an interesting conversation but if it is that's where the issue is joined I said you want to know my politics condensed to one sentence the issue which the line has to be drawn when there's no time for long conversations is to think out is it morally right in your estimation that some people can impose their vision of the good by political force on others that is the ultimate question about utopias thank you very much ladies and gentlemen I'm really very very touched by the reception you gave me I'm really very very touched I've kind of been moving off in other worlds the last few years and I didn't know how tonight would go and if I gave you something of value thank you