 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 was like 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 win 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 picked 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 they're 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 hunted ourselves or whatever it happens to be right or whether we steal it from lions after they've made a kill If you guys have seen this National Geographic video these these bushmen in Africa they actually steal from lions 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 it 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 that 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?