 I want to start today kind of to some extent where we left off yesterday in terms of in this negative in terms of the cultural suffocation that I think we to some extent all live in and but I want to emphasize a different aspect of this this morning and that is the altruism that dominates our culture and the altruism that all of us to some extent or another grew up with the fact that we grew up being taught that what we should focus on in terms of what is important is what is good for other people the focus on sacrifice the focus on the other and the flip side of that what we weren't taught growing up and how to focus on our own values how do I identify our own values indeed that was often suppressed in the name of altruism so many of us I think don't know how to be particularly when we're young we're starting out how to be selfish selfishness is an achievement it requires effort it requires focus it requires really thinking about what is really good for me and how to attain that but that is always throughout our lives we be told don't do that that's not good that is the opposite of morality and even if consciously we're aware that that is wrong it takes a lot to integrate that conscious knowledge into your subconscious and to start focusing on what is really good for me what are my values how do I pursue my values and I think that explains why for many objectives particularly when when we're young art is so difficult because art is that that is most personal it is most about my values my happiness my response my emotions me art is selfish and it's hard to be selfish given how we were raised given the context the the the the cultural context the social context in which we live and it requires effort to engage in being selfish it's it's somewhat easier I guess to do it in the conceptual realm I think it's actually harder to to to do it in in that realm that is more subconscious that realm that is more emotional it takes time for the emotions to catch up with the ideas and it's and it's less in our control or we feel like it's less in our control so it's something that needs to be activated consciously we need to work at getting to the point where the integration is is there we need to pursue our values really make the effort to discover our values pursue them and engage with them it doesn't happen it's not just going to happen automatically um yeah I wanted to this is really emphasized at the start of the romantic manifesto in the psycho epistemology of art and I mean I think most people in this room know that Ein Rand is an opponent of altruism to put it mildly and this is how she characterizes this aspect of what altruism does to a person and to a culture one of the grimmest monuments to altruism is man's culturally induced selflessness his willingness to live with himself as with the unknown to ignore evade repress the personal the non-social needs of his soul to know least about the things that matter most and then and thus to consign his deepest values to the impotent underground of subjectivity and his life to the dreary wasteland of chronic guilt the cognitive neglect of art has persisted precisely because the function of art is non-social art belongs to a non-socializable aspect of reality which is universal i.e applicable to all men but non-collective to the nature of man's consciousness and the this emphasis that it's non-social I think is really important because you can we might talk a little bit later about this you can read the romantic manifesto I think it's a misinterpretation but I can see where the misinterpretation comes from that art is about you being on trial it's like what is it going to expose about me to other people and how are they going to judge me given that I like this work of art or don't like that and you have to take really seriously the opening of the romantic manifesto that that's not the perspective at all and that it's non-social it's about you and your relationship to reality and who cares what other people think about that I mean one of the ways one of the titles that I was going to put sort of as a subhead here art in part of the value of art is to know thyself if you take that sort of maxim from Delphi in ancient Greece it's and it's you should be intensely interested in knowing what you are what you actually believe your deepest convictions you can't change you can engage in self-development and self-improvement if you don't know where you are and art is a powerful powerful lens into that aspect of yourself so it's I really think of it as radically non-social yeah and in that sense radically selfish yeah because it it's about you it's about your values and it's about yourself improvement and it's about you seeing your values in concrete form out there identifying what you really value what your sense of life is and that we'll talk about that in a little while and using that as a tool both as a in fuel to fuel yourself but also as a tool to improve yourself also as a tool to find the things where you need work so it's it's incredibly valuable so one of the goals this morning one of my goals this morning our goals this morning is to encourage you to engage with art to encourage you to to really go out there and explore and find your values and find what you love and I'm gonna I've made this statement on my podcast many times but I think it's worth repeating there are things that are not in your control as much as we'd like them to be in our control they're not in your control one of those things is a thing that I focus on a lot because it's what I do politics politics on facebook stop it it's not that important you're not going to change anybody's mind or you're going to change at the margin a few people's minds but it's not going to change the world and it's not going to make you happier it's not going to contribute to your happiness unless this is what you do now I for me this is what I do right so it is my career so for me it's what does make me happy but for most of us it doesn't I can see you being miserable on facebook focus most of your effort I'm not saying don't do it at all but focus most of your effort on things that are in your control things that it can actually contribute to your life things that will actually make you happy you know last year I gave a talk about rational optimism and part of that is there are so many things in the world out there that you have control over that you have access to particularly in the world we live in today better than at any period in all of human history you have the ability to create your life your environment in which you live on a day to day basis make it beautiful make it something you enjoy make it something when you walk into house you smile put art on the wall engage with art because it's in your control it's something it doesn't matter what trump does or what hillary does you can buy your art or you can buy reproductions one of the things you know I think that's important is you don't have to buy originals it's it's not the fact that it's an original that gives the art the value it's what the art is projecting now there's an added value of being original partially because originals are better than the reproductions but often you can get so much out of the reproduction you don't have to wait to be a millionaire to buy art you can buy posters for ten dollars fifteen dollars and put them on your walls and enjoy them so make your life those parts of your life that you can control make them beautiful yeah you go outside and you see this crap that is called corporate whatever art but so what so at least your environment where you have control make it make it as beautiful and as meaningful to you as possible and again it's for you it's not for your visitors it's not for other people it's for you so what do you love on put it on display um it's you're bringing up beauty I think that's an interesting issue in regard to art and about it's sort of place in the romantic manifesto because I think of it much more but I think we're probably a bit different in this regard it's to fill my life with meaning um and an aspect of that is beauty but beauty has it has a real place for me in art but not it's not the highest place for me I mean it's part of why I like Shakespeare I would and the language is beautiful I mean unbelievably beautiful but I don't think of the place as beautiful but I find them meaningful and that's part of the I think part of what at least art for me gives is a heightened sense of reality and that that's really important to me to see reality and sort of high relief that things stand out and the unimportant fades away um and to that as a regular experience it's part of what you brought up yesterday about it has it's a training of your own consciousness of how to look at reality and for me that is a major major value of art that it stylizes my view of the world and my my way of looking at the world and for me that's highly important and highly meaningful and beauty has it's not I'm not anti-beauty but it's it is a secondary but it's very important value for me yeah and this is personal right for me it's it's much more important so I want to live in a house that's beautiful with a view that's beautiful with furniture that's beautiful with things on the wall that is beautiful maybe that's why I respond to visual art more than you respond to visual art in that sense so again this is personal it's gonna it's gonna be it's it's gonna be different between us so I the point I want to make I'll just repeat it is focus most of your effort on the things that are in your control and don't obsess about things that are out of your control I mean yes get angry when you need to get angry but then put it aside you only live once again your anger is not going to change politics so what's going on in the world and other places focus on what you can do to make your life the best life that you can have so I I want to I want to shift a little bit and and just uh talk about talk about the difference between what you like what you love and what is great art because I think there's a lot of confusion here and and I know different people respond definitely to me but when somebody comes and tells me that's a great movie I go really how do you know that by what criteria you're measuring great I'm fine with people telling me I loved that movie then I understand it you responded to it but what are the aesthetic standards for measuring a great movie and do you do I know those aesthetic standards and you have to be an expert to evaluate greatness not to evaluate like I can't tell you what you like but to evaluate greatness you have to be an expert I'm an expert in literature she's an expert in most of the arts in some extent but certainly in literature and she identifies greatness in literature and she can tell you exactly why every play or or or novel that she identifies is great why it's great and she has aesthetic criteria for what makes it great and by the way the philosophical message is not in that list right it's whether that every other aspect integrates into whatever that philosophical message is or what the theme is everything integrates into that and everything's integrated in but in every art form whether it's literature painting sculpture and of course music have different aesthetic criteria and Iron Man talks about that painting is about color and about reflecting a theme through the use of color that's very different than what literature is about painting doesn't have a plot painting really doesn't have characterization it has an element of that when there's a human being there but it's not fully characterization every one of these art forms is different and requires real expertise aesthetic expertise to be able to evaluate what is great and what is not and I always am hesitant to say something is great I sometimes say it and and and have to think to myself I shouldn't have done that because it's so easy to say when you love something oh that was great but it was great for me in that sense it's great but is it great art is it a great movie so let's take movies just for a minute right movies are the most complex form of art that exists because it is an integration of many art forms it movies have a plot they have characterizations they have elements of literature but Iron Man talks about movies as primarily visual as the main way in which the theme is conveyed is visually not through the dialogue so how do we evaluate the visual aspects of a movie is the cinematography good is the cinematography adding up to the theme of the actual movie of course movies also have actors so there's a whole element of acting which is an aesthetic element are the actors good what is good acting what is bad acting what's mediocre acting sometimes you can feel it but can you actually articulate what it means that's what an expert would be able to do there's music in movies is the music supporting the theme or isn't it supporting the theme is it going against it is it fully integrated those are all hard things to figure out and it's it requires and I'm not saying you can't do it I'm just saying it requires real focus it requires study it requires knowledge that I think very few people have in let's say movies right if you listen to Leonard Picoff's and I highly highly recommend you do eight great plays I think it was mentioned last night eight great plays is one of my favorite Leonard Picoff courses of all you can see the level of expertise that Leonard has had to gain how much he's read how much he studied how much he's thought about how many plays he saw how many plays he read in order to to do the analysis that he does an analysis is brilliant it's it's it's amazing and it's fun and it really gives you a sense of what goes into a play and into understanding a play and viewing a play and but all the different elements and that analysis isn't even what happens on stage that's just reading the play there's a whole other dimension once it's staged that he doesn't even cover because he's he's not analyzing the actual stage performances so I just I just want to say you know we'll talk about what you ought to love and you like but pay attention to these different forms evaluation right there's an aesthetic evaluation and then there's a personal evaluation and those two are not the same thing and I mean this connects to a point that we were talking about last time about I mean two points one about Ayn Rand that she's a great artist and that's really relevant for reading and getting what's in the romantic manifesto and the wider point about aesthetics as a branch of philosophy the way I think about it is there's a there's a direct parallel between politics as a branch of philosophy and then there's derivative areas of study under that like political science and philosophy of law that a philosopher doesn't just by virtue of being a philosopher does not have expertise political science about the full design of a political system that is functional in terms of checks and balances the divisions of power between the branches of government so that's part of what philosophy of political science and philosophy of law study and I think there's a parallel in regard to aesthetics that there's there's basic things that you a philosopher says about art and one of the basic things is about the need that art provides but then to go into all the aesthetic criteria for judging works of art and then as you're saying in the different fields and the way those principles and the standards of judgment vary across the fields that's a specialized study for which you need a lot of knowledge just as in political science you need a lot of knowledge about the actual construction of different forms of government to see which ones endured for a long time which one collapsed easily and so what did the different when it powers were divided in different ways and they had different checks and balances how did this play out and so on to try to devise which is what the founding fathers did a system that can endure over time and preserve rights and liberty that's a complex endeavor of creation and it's relevant when they're thinking about it that they're also involved in the creation of a political system and the same in regard to aesthetics I think there's very few people that I find interesting in aesthetics and reading when you're reading about detailed art and analysis that are not also creators in it because it gives you a perspective that is I think very hard to gain if you don't have that experience. So here's an example from Einwand. Now we know Einwand considers Hugo Dostoevsky Tolstoy great artists, Miky Spilane you know okay artist mediocre artist right as an artist but this is what she writes she says I love the work of Victor Hugo I like Dostoevsky I like the early novels of Miky Spilane I cannot stand Tolstoy right so these are her personal evaluations into what she likes even though she recognizes Tolstoy is a great artist she can't stand him even though she recognizes Miky Spilane is just okay artist she likes him and she uses the same work like to Dostoevsky who's a great artist right so you've got to make that separation she says it's not contradictory to say this is great work of art but I don't like it and in spite of that I encourage you to engage in great art and and again I would even once you don't like and and I refer you again to Lenny Pekoff's course lecture and people ask me where can they find it you can find it on the east store it's not yet on on some of our other platforms but it's in the east store I assume at some point it'll be on campus and and maybe on YouTube but it's on the east store it's the survival value of great but philosophically false art and you know it's it's why you should retolstoy why you should read Dostoevsky in spite of the the the the negativity and the the horrible sense of life or at least try to right at least make an effort to because there's great value to be attained in it all right so I want to I want to move over to um to we're going to talk about sense of life now yeah okay um and so I think sense of life is a complex topic the first thing I think when you encounter the romantic manifesto and you read about this idea of sense of life and she part of what she's arguing in the romantic manifesto is that one's response to art is a product of one sense of life and the creation of art is a product of sense of life but the first thing one should ask about when you encounter this idea is do I think there's such a phenomenon as sense of life and in particular do I think that I have a sense of life not to go around okay Ayn Rand said there's a sense of life now let me start analyze everything in terms of sense of life you have no handle on the idea or the concept and all you can do is apply it very rationalistically um and again going to the issue of art as non-social and that it's about yourself the primary thing one should be interested in is do I think I have a sense of life um and you get in the in the romantic manifesto and particularly that obviously the two articles philosophy and sense of light and art and sense of life her description of the process through which a sense of life is formed um and I've written a little bit on this in the companion to Ayn Rand um my article on a being of self-made soul because I think it's it's a significant element of understanding what she means by an individual as a self-made soul so for some elaboration um you can look at that but what I want to emphasize one point that's I think particularly relevant to the kind of the theme today which is how individual a sense of life is and how individualized it is and part of the reason for why it's so individual or individualized because the way that she has the primary process through which a sense of life is formed is a process of emotional abstraction or emotional generalization it's classifying things in reality and and mostly this is a sort of subconscious classification of classifying things in reality by the common emotion they invoke in you and the in you is important not the kind of motion they invoke in everybody it's the emotion they invoke in you and grouping things together under the same emotion and I give in the companion I'm gonna quote this because I think it's it's it's a it's a very it's a very good illustration of what she I think the process that she means it's a description of Kira and we the living and it's it's it's capturing some of her emotions but particularly this perspective of an emotional generalization or an emotional abstraction um so that I'm not going to read the full part there's more in it than this but some highlights and so let me start from quoting we living Kira had the same feeling and let me just pause and underline the same feeling for eating soup without salt and for discovering a snail slithering up her bare leg and for young men who pleaded broken hearted their eyes humid their lips soft she had the same feeling and again same feeling for white statues of ancient gods against black velvet in museums and for steel shavings and rusty dust and hissing torches and muscles tense as electric wires in the roar of a building under construction she seldom visited museums but they what sorry but when they went out with Kira her family avoided passing by any construction works houses and particular particularly roads and most particularly bridges but she could never be made to enter a public park on sunday and she stuck her fingers in her ears when she heard a chorus singing folk songs close quote and that if you that's part of what I think it looks like to have emotional generalizations and notice how highly individual that is and you're not going to find that in another person and it's and this is just one example of a process that she thinks goes on regularly that you classify things and particularly you do this early on before you're fully conceptual you can't articulate it it's part of why it's an emotional generalization not a conceptual generalization but you're putting things and they have obviously and this is tremendous value significance to you and it's part of what then starts to form what you regard as important in life and what you regard as unimportant in life but it's so highly individual that you're not going I mean this is part of why she links it to the issue of romance you're not going to find someone who has the exact sense of life as you and part of when then she talks about the response to art it's not necessarily that it's everything in the work of art is your sense of life or vice versa but you can have a real affinity that it's there's a real element of my sense of life that is captured in the work of art and that I'm responding to yeah and then in discovering your own sense of life because this this happens automatic and because a lot of it happens when you're very young when you're not conscious of what what is going on what odd does for you as an adult is it allows you to expose that in yourself but you have to make an effort to do that you have to you have to go out and experience the art and you have to think about it you have to introspect about it why do I like it why does it make me feel what I feel what is it about the work of art that does that and it's that's not easy it's not easy it needs you need to train yourself to actually do that to actually engage in that but the reward is self-knowledge the reward is the identification of your sense of life and the stylizing of your consciousness as we we've talked about yesterday and then the ability then to start to some extent impacting your sense of life changing your sense of life and that happens that can happen it takes it takes work and it takes time and the younger you are the easier it is to do it but it means thinking about your conscious values finding art that you respond to that has those conscious values understanding your existing sense of life and how it corresponds or doesn't correspond to your concept your your conscious values and actually letting that integration happen and again part of letting that happen is the experience of art it's the experience experiencing it over and over again and it's you know challenging yourself and going out and seeing more and different kinds of art and challenging yourself to introspect and identify what it is that that art does for you and I think one of the important things to get about sense of life we talked a little bit about this from other aspects yesterday is and this is stressed in the romantic manifesto and she stresses it also when she gets q and a is about art and sense of life you can't view it as everybody has a really formed sense of life that is consistent so one form so she thinks there's such a thing as this person has a vague indeterminate sense of life he has some elements because it's if you think of it as this emotional generalization it involves values not everybody has values that they're formed and then the viewing the world through it and generalizing through it there's some aspect of that but you can have a vague indeterminate sense of life you certainly can have all kinds of clashing elements in it and the artists can too so the idea that an artwork always presents a consistent sense of life that is a very rare thing I think and I think she thinks it's very rare even when you get to the level of great art and she comments on that in the romantic manifesto both say I mean in painting she comments about Dolly having real conflicting elements in the sense of life that is projected as his painting and Vermeer who I think she obviously loves that there's real conflicting elements in it so you can't go into it this this is the rationalism about okay well it's a great work of art so it must have a consistent sense of life so let me identify what that is that's not how it works and so part of the real value of art it can help you form your sense of life that you because you're seeing the world through a value perspective and you're getting that's what it looks like to look at the world through a value perspective and I could be more like that and I can develop my values and learn to express them and that is in part the formation not just a conscious identification of it but the actual formation of a sense of life and she I think she thinks that's an real I mean it's part of why she thinks art in for the people developing so for children teenagers is really important because it helps them not just identify their self of life sense of life but actually form it yeah so I want to move on to kind of the practical side in the sense of giving you some advice on finding art you like and and how to how to deal with that or how to expand your horizons and and there really two sections here I want to do first I want to I want to encourage you to find the art that you like and second I want to encourage you to expand your horizons and try things you might be a little bit uncomfortable in terms of trying or go outside of the art you know that you like so that you discover new things so first figure out what you like make a list you know go around think of all the movies you've seen that you like the music that you like the things that you like and start introspecting about what you like about the things that you already like engage in that embrace that you know immerse yourselves in the things that you already like don't say because because we've said here some of them might not be great art oh I need a I don't want to like that anymore well but you do like it right acknowledge that you like it try to understand why you like it so start with that that has to be the beginning what are your values what what how are your values reflected in the art that you like right now don't shy away from that don't run away from that that is the that is the starting point of your journey with regard to aesthetics and with regard to art um and the the the issue of art forms and understanding which art forms you really respond to in which you don't I think is important so the at least the advice that I took from the romantic manifesto is not okay you have to enjoy every form of art equally so spend one quarter of your time in music and one quarter of the time in painting one quarter in sculpture you have to get what you're really responding to I have a real hierarchy of values in terms of forms of art like music is way on the top then it's sculpture it used to be literature and painting but way down painting is higher now for literature's bottom for me in those arts and you can see that in Ayn Rand one of the questions I like in the q and a book is I think it's in the q and a book um that she's asked about that she must love architecture it comes up and her view is yeah no a lot of people write to me I must love architecture I don't love architecture I wrote the fountain head and for the theme of the fountain head it was logical to choose an architect as the center of it because the elements of science and art coming together in in in this field um and then she spent two years researching this but she said like after the fountain head architecture has no special meaning to me I like painting and music for instance higher than architecture and that it's important in terms of being selfish that I mean I know what the areas that I want and so in terms of exploration and trying to find new values and so on it's I'm I explore music and sculpture much more than the other arts I still expose myself to the others and I've developed a liking of painting that I didn't have before but it is I mean you have so much time you have to really go after what it is that you respond to and what you seem to really value and you're going to get different things in different art forms and again we're going to be different in this sense you know again in the romantic manifesto it's clear fine rant the literature is at the top right that's the most important she is she is a novelist after all and and and that's where she gets the most profound response right to is the literature her most profound response is the literature and she gets something different I think from music and you know one example is is a response I mean I'm bewildered somewhat by a response to Beethoven right she doesn't like Beethoven and I understand why because essential to Beethoven's metaphysical value judgment is the importance of the struggle it's the importance of conflict it's the importance of the of the fight right now in some of his music ends with defeats but not all of his music ends with defeat and now Rand says I don't want that in my music I don't want the struggle in my music but the struggle exists in the literature she loves right so in literature she's willing to willing to embrace the struggle the battle of values but not in music because in music she's looking for something else and I love the struggle in music I love Beethoven and you know to me that clash that that is the clash of values the the the fight the battle that is expressed in Beethoven's music that energizes me that you know that there's nothing that gets me going more than a Beethoven symphony or or a concerto before debate right because he's reflecting exactly what I'm experiencing and it it provides me with real energy and and there's nothing quite more profound for me than than than than listening to Beethoven he's he's really you know really high up in the top so in different art forms we might find different of our values and that again that will vary across individuals right I recognize the malevolence in many of Beethoven's in much of Beethoven's music and I can abstract that away and enjoy what I find important in Beethoven's music right the energy that it provides the energy that it projects right and you know some people ask me what the secret of the energy that I have on stage in other places maybe there it is I mean it is it's it's an art that fuels me and art is a huge part of my life has been since I was 20 years old huge part of my life and I don't think my life would be anywhere near what it is today without that I'm married to an artist and that's part of it right so I encourage you to yeah to go out and and and but don't yeah don't do 25 25 25 25 percent figure out what you love figure out what art form is most important to you and how much and what you get out of it but don't do it passively we we tend to you know it's too easy to enjoy the art we enjoy it just be passive about it I think if you really want to get the full benefit of the aesthetic experience you've got to figure out why you like it you've got to start thinking about it you've got to start evaluating and judging it the art that's around you and as you do that with the things you like I think that'll open you up to liking more things it'll open you up to broadening your horizons in terms of what I would call elevating your taste right because it's easy for us to like stuff that's good I'll use Mickey's plane although Mickey's plane is really good but you know Mickey's plane we want to elevate ourselves up so we can like Victor Hugo it's really important that we do that in every one of these different art forms and and and that that's going to take work and the first step in the work is to figure out what you like what you why you like what you like and and and it started evaluating it all right so the second point is that I want to make is how to elevate how to expand how to how to learn about art more about art and about what is available to you and then figure out whether you like it or not and and here I would basically say you know study study the romantic manifesto read it again you read it before the conference read it after the conference you might get a little bit more out of it or different something different out of it given that we've talked about it so much and you're probably talking in the halls about it and about the art and you're seeing art you know outside it in the gallery and you're thinking about it so now is a great time to reread it when it's part of your context where you're really absorbed by it you know things I would recommend in terms of just again Lena Peacoff's works on art both the lecture I mentioned and the course 8 great plays I mean it'll make you view movies differently the 8 great plays even though it's a different art form there's similarities enough between that it'll make you look at movies differently once you once you take the 8 great plays 8 great plays course you know I would read the Q&A book Robert Mayhew's edited version of the Q&A book the section on aesthetics is fascinating just as he on Rand answers questions about art there's some amazing content there so find as much material as you can within the objective realm about it but don't use it as a guide okay now I have to do these things use it to try to understand better what it is you're experiencing and then I'd recommend even if it's just a short book or a course or somewhere you know one of these online courses or something just a basic art history course everything pre 20th century forget about the 20th century art history analysis of the 20th century is useless it's worse than useless it's it's evil it's bad right but they're pretty good at pre 20th century you know they they can identify what's good art and what's not and what's what's what's relevant and what's not in pre 20th century art and just get a get a sense of of of what has happened and and how it has evolved you want to add anything I want to say something about the contemplation but I don't know if that go for it um so Iran's emphasizing sort of setting a sort of context for you in the actual viewing of art but the actual experience of it and as Ayn Rand says at the start of the romantic manifesto it's not distinctive to her artist for the sake of contemplation that's part of why it's always thought is not having a function that's not her view because that contemplation is really really important but contemplation does not mean experience in it for five seconds it means taking the time to enter a world um and you really have to that is demanding on the part of the viewer and this is a point that's emphasized in the in Atlas shrug with Richard Haley and you have to live up to the artistic achievement not expect he's going to hand it to you in a way that I can just be half asleep and I should respond to this so it takes energy it's not it's not a struggle or anything but it takes real focus and it takes time and there's your arms we both mentioned the Q&A book because it's really really helpful to have her Q&A gathered by theme in terms of aesthetics and art and various comments she's made and answers she's given one question she's asked is something like why am I so tired when I go to museums and her answer is you're switching universes too often so it's not well they don't put carpet it's marble floors and so it's your switching universes too often and that is it's straining and it's straining mentally to do that um the so the idea of going through a museum that it's a five hour sludge I've got to go see everything that it's in the guide and so and I'll spend 15 seconds in front of each and so that is a completely selfless way of experiencing art um and when when she like I I would never had a duty premise in regard to art so when I go to a museum and if someone tells me why did you see this highlight or that highlight and I say no I went then I saw a few things and that's what I did and I never like oh my god I didn't go to see um now it's important and you're on the other side you should go see great art but it's not you have to see in the Louvre every piece of great you couldn't do it and it would be it unbelievably exhausting but what I do do now as a result of that Q&A is when I go to a museum I try to consider even if they're in different rooms or so on the paintings or the sculpture of the same artist and only that's all I'm looking at and I try not to look at the other things as because I want to enter that person's world and that takes time and it takes effort on your part I find some of the best museums or exhibits where it's the work of one artist like the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is enormously powerful um and I respond to that I don't love Van Gogh but that I respond to it and it's in part because you see his a real collection of works and you feel like you've entered if you spend time and really contemplate you feel like you've entered Van Gogh's world and that is a that's a unique experience but it takes effort on your part again not it's not painful but it's also you I mean I often won't look at I'm too tired to look at a good movie yeah I mean it's it's it reminds me the Van Gogh exhibit it reminds me of the Vermeer exhibit a few years ago in the in it was in Washington DC and it was the largest collection of Vermeer's in one place ever and I remember standing in the snow it was freezing um it's 4 a.m. to be able to get tickets and standing all that whole morning and trying to keep warm with coffee and multiple layers and I think it's the coldest I've ever been in my life and I've been to Canada I haven't been to Canada in the winter I've been in Minnesota in February but but um oh and but once you once you go into that exhibit and you and you know we spent hours we spent hours in there wow I mean it was just such a spiritual experience it was such a fantastic uh emotional experience and again even Vermeer is mixed right because the themes of Vermeer that the the the um subjects are boring they're very naturalistic but you're entering the universe of his of his uh epistemology in a sense in the way he views the world his style is so illuminated it's so beautiful it's so amazing and it it's just it's just quite an experience so there was another exhibit of Houdon's sculpture at the at the at the Getty Museum I don't know 10 years ago and again just sculpture after sculpture after sculpture of sheer genius and and it was again powerful powerful experiences but here's some advice about going to museum I encourage you to go to museums when you're traveling to a new city go to the museum we're in Cleveland I haven't been to the museum yet I'm gonna try to get away this week at some point and go over there my guess is it's it's it's got some good artwork why because wealthy businessmen in in the 19th century late 19th century early 20th century lived in Cleveland Cleveland was an industrial center part of the industrial revolution they tended to collect art they tended to collect good art from Europe and from the United States and then they tended to or their children tended to donate it to the local museum so my guess is there's good 19th century art in at the museum in Cleveland now I hope it's not in the basement much of it is I can guarantee that I hope some of it's on display some of you might have been there already and can tell me but uh but it's worth going when you walk into a room in a museum in order to avoid some of this fatigue scan it quickly notice something that attracts you I and go to the thing that attracts you I don't try to see everything see the thing that first attracted now you might miss some some amazing paintings there but the first time you're at a museum go just in every room to one or two paintings that strike you initially and then stand there contemplate it feel emote right and then try to think about why you're feeling what you're feeling try to evaluate it spend some time on the one painting don't be on a duty premise no no no you know two minutes for each painting they're 10 in the room right spend 10 minutes in front of one painting they're often places to sit sit and look at it and just contemplate it feel it um so focus on on the thing you like now at some point and I recommend going to museums a lot so not just once so at some point you might want to get a guide and and figure out okay what are the what are the famous paintings what is what are what do people consider great art and then just do the museum do five six ten great pieces and stand then figure out whether you like them and try to think about why they're considered great art and maybe listen to an explanation of why they're considered great art you know people always ask me do you like the Mona Lisa now the problem with the Mona Lisa is it's become almost kitsch because people wear t-shirts with Mona Lisa and it's advertising and it's everywhere but if you actually stand in front of the Mona Lisa and and look at it and then you listen a little bit to the history and everything the achievement of the Mona Lisa is monumental in the history of art and you can learn to appreciate that and you can actually get a response because there's something incredibly beautiful going on there and particularly if you have a context now not all art needs a context but some art does so look for the greatness because you'll learn to love more art you'll learn to respond to more art by focusing on what's historically be being viewed as great and maybe the values the greatness conveys to you are not your values you know you go to museum in Europe particularly in the Renaissance and a lot of the a lot of the almost all the themes almost all of it's Italian art all the themes are religious and you go wow I'm an object of this this meaningless to me but is it there's immense beauty there's real emotion there's striking values in many of these paintings I mean there are paintings of Jesus on a cross that incredibly touching that incredibly beautiful and and rip your heart out of a human being on a cross and the evil of that and the and the and the horror of that but it's a powerful experience it's like again maybe reading Dostoevsky or reading Tolstoy but there's a there's a great value and if it's a great art and this is the point Leonard makes in his in his talk if it's a great art then it's focusing on what's important to the artist in this particular event in this crucifixion and again so it's highlighting the importance and not dealing with the unimportant and it's stylizing your mind to start looking for the important it's stylizing your subconscious to focus on the important you know if you if you if you go to museum and you really focus on the art when you walk back to your hotel room you're suddenly you're just your visuals change a little bit oh the flowers over there I didn't notice them before and there's this over here suddenly you're much more visually aware you're much more visually focused just in your day-to-day life so it changes you and you can find you can you can get that benefit from art that is not projecting back to you your every every one of your values so try to experience and that won't work for everybody and not everybody will like it and I I like painting so I respond in that way to painting other people know you know painting is not where I get those values from so I'm not interested but I would suggest going to museums and doing that third level and this is I mean I did this last time I was at the National Gallery in London and I found it incredibly pleasurable but I've been to the National Gallery many times and I've seen the paintings there so I know it well but I actually decided I'm going to do the whole museum from beginning to end I'm really going to take it all in try to take it all in and to me the context was the history of art history and the relationship between history of art and history and you could see it once you know the art and you know a little bit about you can see it oh yeah this is the this is the Middle Ages this is the Renaissance and look at the changes and look at Jesus of the Middle Ages and Jesus of the Renaissance he's a completely different Jesus right because the Renaissance he's the strong you know robust youth that's put in in the in the in the Middle Ages he's this withering horrible you know a shell of a human being and what does that mean and what does that mean in terms of the history of the world and what does that mean in terms of what's happening in the world and then what is the art leading up to the Enlightenment and could it there been an Enlightenment without the art that laid up could there been an Enlightenment without a renaissance I don't think so art art is part of that cultural change you cannot get just pure ideas without that aesthetic experience and do you see the change between the Enlightenment into Romanticism or into the 19th century into the modern period and to me that was incredibly valuable that a whole podcast on it and it was it was a lot of fun now I don't recommend that to everybody but once you're at the certain point and you know enough it's really good to get a big scope a big picture of what it looks like and you can get immense value out of it and you can learn something again it all just not didactic primarily but it can be right there's certain elements that you can learn out of it for example how history is guided by ideas over time is reflected in art in dramatic ways so to learn about the power of ideas over history you can see that in art you can also see it in history but in art it's it's visual and striking so that would be some of my advice you know in terms of in terms of in terms of museums I want to say one thing about the religious art yeah and it goes back to a point that I made yesterday which is that there's such a thing as moral emotions and going to the history of the west you have to take seriously that religions had has had a near monopoly on ethics and the idea that that you can't get any value from religious art some of it is incredibly moving and in particularly from the issues of moral emotions so the issue of reverence so if the if Michel Angelo's Pieta turns you off because while the virgin birth is stupid it depicts such incredible reverence in the early I mean the later Pieta is much more defeated and mournful work but the earlier is it conveys what real reverence looks like and that is a moral emotion and if if you've if you've put into I'm never looking at religious art you're sealing yourself off because religions had such a monopoly in ethics you're sealing yourself off from that dimension of what art can project and convey now some secular does it but because religion's been so dominant you have it it's selfish to pursue that and find that kind of value in some and some of it doesn't have that kind of value but some really does so we're running out of time a little bit let me just say I'm not going to give you recommendations about literature or poetry or drama there are people in the audience right now who are far bigger experts than that than I am and I'm not an expert and I I don't know what I'm talking about so don't you know in that area you know don't listen to me Lisa's here and Shoshana's here and Anne is here and in their realms they are the experts and and I'll leave them to recommend to you make the recommendations and don't ask in the Q&A because I don't have anything to say and when once once I ventured into saying something I got slapped in the face equivalent of being slapped in this space not literally by I won't say some of you know but I do want to say something about I want to say something quickly about music and I do want to say something about movies and TV so I know we all love music music seems to be something that everybody responds to and and we respond primarily to the music that's around us to the popular music most of us have very very strong feelings towards the music we grew up with you know I I was a teenager during the 70s so there's no better music ever than than that made in the 70s right because it evokes certain emotions and certain memories and certain feelings that have to do with that era in which you grew up and I think popular music to a large extent is built that way what popular music does is it evokes very quick easy memories and emotions that relate to when you first heard it it's not deeper than that and it's fun and it's great because I like remembering some stuff about my teenage years some stuff not so much but it's it's it's yeah it's what I grew up with it's it has it feels like home feels like home and many of you might have grown up with a certain style of type of music or whatever but and and that just feels right it it matches and that's what I said embrace what you like don't don't run away from that but I really encourage you particularly in the world in which we live today to to check out classical music to to try it and I'm gonna make a few recommendations on how to do it the house right um I'm gonna recommend a few pieces and and how to do but first let me say the how turn off the lights take care of all visual stimulation to turn off the lights make it dark make sure it's quiet in your room put on the piece of music and crank it to 11 how loud it is matters you can't listen to Beethoven quietly doesn't work you can't listen to a Khman enough as a whisper it has to be fully envelope you it has to be if there's a re and don't talk oh it drives me crazy when people talk and it's why and when we get a classical concert we don't talk we listen so do it at home if it's good for the for the theater with other people you're not not talking because you're respecting other people you're not talking because you're focusing on what's happening in front of you right and there's a reason you go to other types of music into concerts and everybody's yelling and shouting and clapping and and singing along and classical music if you start humming along people will slap you right because it distracts on the focus it's so important there's so much there and then don't try to do too much don't take a whole symphony in at once we just don't have the attention span anymore to do that you have to train yourself up so take one movement and listen to it take a movement from Beethoven listen to it take a break take a movement from wakhman enough listen to it so put on the first movement of wakhman enough second piano concerto third piano concerto and just do that and just turn the lights off and just let them music in you know envelop you and let your mind you know i know some objectives do meditate to me this is what meditation is this is my equivalent right because i let the music i try to empty my mind in that sense i try to focus just on the music not on images not on thoughts i try to take away the dialogue and just focus on the music and what it's doing to me you know do tchaikovsky do wakhman enough do Brahms do Beethoven do some shuba early on don't start with Mahler don't start with Wagner you know start with with where the melodies are relatively they're still complex relatively simple where the emotion is immediate and and start with one movement start with half a movement you don't have to again there's no duty here you don't have to finish it experience what you experience my mind is drifting okay stop and that's a way to really get into that world and i think what you get into that world the rewards are you know amazing emotional rewards are just amazing i can't listen to classical music in the background it grinds it grates on me because as anko said it's like no no wakhman enough should be listened to not you know in the background so if somebody's playing second piano concerto in the background it's like ah no this is too sacred this is i have real reverence for this it's it's not right to do it that way was this any by music well i'll say one other thing about how because i think i said yesterday that the main lesson i took from the romantic manifesto is there's other art i should be exploring and since i love music music was it um i took seriously that the hypothesis that it involves a real integration that your mind has to make and make over time seriously so it's not listen to a piece and if you didn't respond you need to to have it do this fairly often for your mind to start being able to process it and it took me i did this when i was 17 it took me about two months i think to really start to respond to classical music but i was willing to put in the time because if the rewards were what they promised to be it's worth the time and it certainly was but yeah so i took that from the book too yeah that's definitely i agree completely i mean repetition doing it over or listening to the same piece over again you get more out of it you'll learn how to appreciate it and it takes time to appreciate it so far and to the way music is done today it's so different that uh and the emotions it evokes are so much deeper and so much more powerful when you get to the point i i think you'll be rewarded if you do it um the most popular art form that we all experience regularly is is television and movies um and and you can view this on a number of levels a lot of movies are just fun and they're just fun to do and and that's fine um i find there's very little that is really you know really has an impact on me that has a a really deep impact on me when i go to the movies i you know i don't ask in a q and i can't stand superhero movies anymore enough like i saw two or three got the point repeating that fifteen or a hundred times doesn't change the one storyline and i don't like superheroes i just like heroes giving them superpowers doesn't i think i think actually diminishes what it means what it means to me because i i don't have superpowers so it doesn't reflect anything for me um i find them boring and and uninteresting uh and but but yeah i can understand going to see them they're fun they kind of you get the momentary thing but again it's like pop art it's like pop pop music as compared to to to real i i find most of the movies i love movies that were made in the 40s and 50s even the 30s i i i even went through a period when i was young where i did a lot of silent movies and the the benefit of silent movies is it forces you to focus in on what einrance said movies about which is the visual because there's no dialogues all you can do is is look and so so you experience that visual and i know if you i recommend sick feet if you watch sick feet it's very strange it's from modern i it's very strange but i think it's i think it's worth doing and maybe watching it more than once so you get it because it again conditions you to start looking at visuals and seeing visuals and embracing movies as visuals even though unfortunately the makers of them are not always embracing that aspect of it um i you know i think i think television today has this immense potential because it can tell a long story it can it can it can give us what what a what a novel somewhat somewhat of what a novel can do because it it has it it's now embraced this mini series a long format of television but unfortunately most of the stories are depressing and and dark and you know we talked a little bit about breaking but and by the way i enjoyed some of Breaking Bad not all of it um i used to yell at the television uh because i but it's it's so there's the elements there that you can enjoy but overall the fact that this is the best says something about the culture in which we live so let me make a television recommendation i hate doing these things but and and i've said to other people partially i'm making this recommendation to get validation i loved it and i'm wondering if i'm if it's real right if it's as good as i think it is because this is i was so blown away by this television series i so enjoyed it it had such a profound impact emotional impact on me and my wife um and and i'd love for you to have it but i'd love for you to also you know somebody who knows something about this to tell me if i'm wrong um it's called Mr Sunshine the challenge is it's in korean and i know some of you i think harry tried the first episode or something and you know i think i read something on hbl get through the first episode the first episode's hard partially because you're trying to get used to korean partially because a lot is happening and you don't understand what's going on and partially because and i'm gonna say something uh you know it's it's hard to differentiate people of a different uh features it's hard to say who is who you know you have to you have to get used to their features because they're not like like what we're used to right um so it took me a while to figure out who's who but get through three episodes and i cannot think of a of a of a television series i've experienced with more positive values real values not superficial values real values love patriotism and what happens when there's clash uh uh you know multiple people loving one multiple men loving one woman and the relationship between the men and the woman i mean it's just and and it you know it just was i found it profound and and moving and you know there's one flaw in the movie in the television in my view uh that would have made it just perfect in the end but i'm not going to say what it is because i don't want to give anything away but if you've seen it and you're curious ask me i will tell you uh but uh to me it was what and by the oh and the visuals oh my god the visuals are stunning talk about using the image to convey emotion in a movie in in in a in a in a television i've never i don't think i've ever seen a television series do it quite as well if you watch the movies of akira kawasawa the the great japanese director you get a little sense of that that that asian aesthetic and their the the beauty of of every frame and hear that every frame is beautiful every frame you want to stop and put up on a wall but some of them they motion they evoke just small movements color and just the image is i guess i guess you'll either be bored or you'll love me for that recommendation but i definitely encourage you to go back to the 40s and 50s and and watch a lot of movies there's a lot of great art there's a lot of very enjoyable stuff with with some themes okay so let me uh let me uh let's try to wrap it up quickly here um you know focus on what you like it might be great art it might not be but at the end even after you go through the process of expanding of elevating at the end of the day you have to like it you have to respond to it you have to understand what you're getting from it even if it's art you don't particularly like you have to at least know what you're getting from it why like like shakespeare we don't like the theme but we like certain aspects so you have to be able to differentiate what are you liking what are you not liking what are you getting from it don't go watch shakespeare out of a sense of duty again because it's great right go watch shakespeare and practice watching shakespeare to get to the point where you can understand the benefits you're getting from it but if you never if that never happens then stop watching it be selfish it's about you it's about your life so i'm making your life the best that it can be don't you i mean i used iran's recommendations as a starting point so i so the first thing after i read doran's first i went and tried to read everything she recommended right and and tried to view everything she recommended and looked at vermia and rachmaninoff and looked at the novels what does she recommend in the novels what are the heroes of the novels like and and that's a great starting point but don't make that the end point and you'll find that you don't always agree with iran in terms of her likes or dislikes again i love Beethoven iran did not and partially it's my sense of life versus iran's sense of life i you probably know i embraced the fight in the struggle she viewed the fight in the struggle as something she had to do but her focus was on that what was possible what was possible in the 19th century that that vision of what life can be that's what you wanted you know that that state of happiness that didn't require the struggle didn't require the challenge but i embraced that right it's part of who i am so to me yeah michael angelo uh you know there's nothing that moves me i mean there's so many things like this but there's any moves me more than michael angelo's david i could stand in front of michael angelo's david for days and because it reflects what an ideal man is to me right and and and and it's that determination and that courage and that fearlessness and that beauty that is just projected back at you that it is to me is overwhelming so don't be willing to embrace who you are and what what you like and what you can identify anything yeah and at the end you know we'll just end with this go out then have and enjoy enjoy enjoy deeply you know understand and enjoy and and experience experience experience experience and be be selfish it's it's hard in the culture we live in in a sense that there's so many forces that are telling you know and you have to continuously remember who you are and what you are and what your philosophy is art is one way in order to do that go out there and be selfish thank you thank you yes scholar from Delaware hey scholar good morning gentlemen i would like to know what film directors that you both love the most what the one film director that you love the most i knew i was going to get questions like this and i have to say as i get old i can't remember the names anymore and things like that but you know i i love rich lang which i mentioned i even like his american movies which not a lot of people like but i found his american movies really really good i like hitchcock yeah hitchcock i would put it's my top yeah hitchcock and and and again if you oh oh you know maybe you know up there in the top three or top five urns lubech lubech urns lubech oh my god so my favorite movies not in the nautica to be or not to be uh shop around the corner shop or shop around the corner i love shop around the corner really everything lubech made you you know i enjoy so i hope you enjoy find lubech movies i mean talk about a positive sense of life and and and joy and and and uh i mean i mean i meant to not like nautica let's be clear and and she i don't think she would have liked to be or not to be and i understand completely why because nautica makes fun of communism to be or not to be makes fun of nazism uh and and the two for for her and i can understand this they're too evil to be made fun of right they're too evil to be made fun of i still enjoy them absolutely um so lubech yeah good to go and you said dr onkar there's so few okay you was going to say hitchcock yeah i would say hitchcock for me but it movies aren't i mean the way higher value for iran than there are there's some movies i like but um that that i have like views about all directors and stuff it doesn't have as much of value to me yeah i have long lists of movies with rankings of them and what i liked and what i didn't like about them and there are hundreds of them that i that i've because i've watched thousands of movies but let's try to make the questions really short because there are a lot of people in very little time thank you gentlemen show hi there so i was wondering if either of you have heard of louis morrow got shulk he is a pianist and composer basically at the during the time of show pan he was called the show pan of the creoles or a show pan of new orleans and what you might think of him i don't i mean i've heard some of his music okay it was okay i didn't respond greatly to it but i haven't really explored i haven't listened a lot to it um but that's the extent i just want to recommend him it's got shulk g o t t s c h a l k yeah so i mean one of the things i know about the 19th century is that even second rate composers of the 19th century are fantastic they're not as good as maybe the first rate but they're good you can get a lot out of them and there were a lot of them so once you get beyond that first wrong there's a lot of second-run composers who who are really good and and that's true in painting that's true in sculpture there was so much painting and so much sculpture going on in that era it was so it's such an era there was so immersed in art that a lot of times you find the second rate people are good better a lot better than the first rate people often today i'm curious about whether you what you think the role of judgment is in the aesthetic experience in this sense you said you know we went through the process of viewing work of art responding to it emotionally and then deciphering what your reason is for why you respond to it emotionally and then would you agree that there's a next stage of judging whether your reason is consistent with your philosophy um and if it's not working to correct you know whatever psychological or philosophical premise is is conflicting because you can't just trust that your positive reaction is based on a life enhancing reason you may be having a positive reaction because of a philosophical contradiction that that reveals do you think that that's a valid part of this process i mean i think it's it's not part of the process it's part of what you can get from art and it's part of the issue of the self exploration but it's it's it's you have a very different focus than if it's you think you're responding to something i'm responding to the defeatism in the work and i think of it i have this real element in my soul that undercuts me in certain ways that i don't think values are really possible in the end and as a result i'm too unwilling to take risks if you start to think that about yourself and that's part of what art can help you explore about yourself but it's a very different process to then start thinking about yourself and the premises you hold how they're embedded in your soul how they manifest in your actions and in your emotions and it's but part of so there is an issue about reprogramming your sense of life and that doesn't mean wholesale necessarily can mean elements of it and art is a window into your sense of life but it's a very different focus than if you're going from now the art to this is what something i've learned about myself that i want to explore further and think about and think about whether i need to change and and i'd be very careful yeah because it's very easy to be wrong about why you're responding the way you're responding it's not easy to figure out why you're responding to what what you're responding so i'll take the religious art example you're standing in front of a religious painting and you respond very positively to it oh i must be embedded with christian you know so be careful how you do it that you're actually your evaluation is right and your judgment of yourself is right make sure you're not judging yourself based on one experience you know get multiple confirmations of it before you judge yourself you want to know you want to have quite a bit of a look at that christian piece of a painting and say i'm pleased or i feel pleasure in response to it and that means i should look and focus on what the positive elements are in the painting yeah to be objective you might be looking at the fact that jesus is it has a bunch of followers who are following him and that gives you some indication you have some sort of power lost premise and you know yes would you agree yeah so that for some reason that reminded me of a point i wanted to make and didn't how many of you seen the movie braveheart oh yeah what is the theme of braveheart freedom really really freedom i mean don't impose your objective values on a piece of art where they don't belong they're not there the freedom that he's fighting for is the freedom to be ruled by a scottish king instead of an english king that's our freedom as we understand it and the movie has really good elements in it the aspects of the movie that i like but it's not about freedom and and you can't impose your i see so many people when they analyze movies taking their objectives values and finding them in the movie where it's not there be objective about how you evaluate what is going on on screen and what the story actually says or what the painting actually is before you do the evaluation and everything else but i hate to break it to you guys but but it's not in braveheart you know it's it's about and it's not in game of thrones right game of thrones is all about who's gonna rule rule meaning rule you know not respect individual rights and protect our freedoms right neither one of those so they're not about freedom in the sense that we understand the concept freedom it's it's a it's very collectivist it's i mean there's certain issues of justice and injustice in the movie that that make that palatable but but that's not the theme so remember you have to be the context of whatever the 16th century was even a concept of freedom in the 16th century as we understand it today and what are those words mean to the act to the to the characters in the thing so be objective about your evaluation of the thing and that's the fear i have it'd be too judgmental about yourself is you're not going to be objective about evaluating odd and then you're going to judge yourself on a on a wrong basis so so get good at evaluating before you do the judging and i'd make one wider point about that what connects to something i said earlier you can't assume that it has a theme because it's called a movie art is an achievement it requires a real integration in the sense of life on the part of the artist who's then able technically to put this in i think many movies don't have a theme and this is part of what i find funny about when people are analyzing it like it has to have a theme and it has to have a subject no it can just be a conglomeration of things that don't make any sense should we do this you if you want to i know okay so here's a question to you guys you can respond i can show a piece of art tell you tell you a few things about it and i think it might evoke different responses in the audience to kind of maybe stir things up a little bit or we can just keep on taking questions the questioners are like no take a question all right this is the condition i'm showing it right a lot some of you many of you probably know the piece and know its its origins and history don't say anything please so no comment on on the part of those of you who know it and then i'll just say a few things and you know hopefully to create a little conversation out there because i i think you're gonna my expectation is you're gonna respond differently to it so this is a test if you respond the same it's not good all right put put the painting up all right so this is this is a painting obviously and and my expectation would be that people respond to it very differently and i've seen people respond that people who hate this it's some people would even say it's it's a little pornographic and they they don't like it and it projects it has a it has a definitely theme which i'm gonna tell you what it is what i think it is uh in a minute um it's it's obviously related i mean it's a nude it's a nude that's unabashed it's a nude that's looking straight at you there's a certain pride in the nudity their hands are behind her back what does that mean vulnerable yeah there's a vulnerability there what else does it mean submission i mean she this could be in a different context i've seen paintings like this where she's a slave girl she's not here you can tell that immediately by how she's looking and the and the she's enticing you she's not submissive in the sense of she's enticing she's looking up she's inviting and if you're male and female you probably respond to this painting differently right i mean the theme of this painting i think and and uh it was nice to hear that ayn Rand agreed with me i agree with ayn Rand rather um is femininity or at least ayn Rand's view of femininity and it it it really concretizes that in a for me at least and and you know you'll have to judge and you'll have to think about whether it does for you or not but for me it really captures what ayn Rand's view of femininity is um this is a painting by capilletti it's a painting that hung in ayn Rand's apartment uh it's uh it's it's one of my all-time favorite paintings and it's i can't pass it i've got a i've got a photograph of it hanging in my house i can't pass it without stopping and and looking and uh and it's it's it's very evocative and very emotional and i think very powerful so um anyway i thought i thought you'd enjoy or get something out of it and something out of maybe your response to it vis-a-vis my response to it vis-a-vis other people's response to it so okay well we take it down and take take a couple of questions uh thank you you're not sure that's good so you're on you mentioned that um in movies and in that television show mr. sunshine in particular some of the frames are so beautiful that you could you know put them on your wall but then there's this concept that photography isn't a valid art form so i'm wondering you know if if it's not just a capturing of existence but it's you know a staged photograph is there any way that photography can be an art form if the move like if the pictures of movies are such an important piece of that art form well i think it's very different because the pictures are serving a purpose in in movies that the pictures are not an end in themselves the pictures are serving the purpose of the theme and the pictures would mean at the end of the day the pictures would be nothing if they didn't serve the theme of the series and in my view of mr. sunshine that the pictures do serve the theme that is the the every frame is serving the emotional and the and the thematic purpose of what of of what is you know what is going on and and and so they integrate really really well uh if photography is just one still image it's not serving it's not serving another artwork's purpose however i'll say this i think with the ability to manipulate photographs that we have today it might be come an art form i think just taking a photograph is not but i think your ability to manipulate it in pretty pretty dramatic ways i think might it might be i again i'm not a philosopher of art so i'm not gonna say it is or it isn't but i think it's something that should be considered by philosophers of art given ability in photoshop to do stuff with it that they're just taking a picture is is very different thank you yep last question sorry guys thanks um you talk about exploring and identifying your own sense of life and maybe thinking about that on paper but yesterday you said that a statement like oh my sense of life is malevolent or benevolent that's not sufficient so can you give an example of what sort of vocabulary or statements would go into an appropriate description of a person's sense of life i'll give one aspect of it that i think is i mean she calls it the key aspect so she calls it the key concept when you're talking about a metaphysical orientation is the concept of important um and that important in its fundamental philosophical sense means a metaphysical issue what's what is deserving of attention and her answer is reality and that doesn't mean that it's not a value it has there's a value element that's implicit but what you view as this is important i have to take this into consideration when i act when i decide what to do how i think that is a metaphysical consideration so you one of the things to do i think and she gives examples of this of being honest with yourself of what you regard as important and she gives things like it's important to obey my parents but that it's important to understand things it's important not to stick my neck out it's not an example of hers um but and these are highly specific too so there's a difference between it's important to obey my parents it's important to obey my mother it's important to obey my teachers it's important to get good grades there's all kind and i think the flip side of what you regard as this is not important and i can't fathom how anybody takes this as important is this gives you a contour of starts to give you a contour of what your metaphysical orientation is and it's highly particular it's again highly particular highly individual but i think that as it's right that that's the key concept in trying to trying to conceptualize to start to conceptualize it great thank you all again uh thanks for watching be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to never miss a video