 They've just had a conversation. I'm kind of interrupting. I'm going to put you in the middle of it, because this is where he, I think, Jordan Peterson brings Zyn Rand up for the first time and introduces what he thinks his problem was with Zyn Rand, although it's not that clear. Ian wants me to play it one and a half times. I don't know. Can we really do that? Can we play it one and a half times? I mean, that seems wrong, right? We played it. What should we do? Play it 1.25. But if it's too fast, please tell me, because I also don't want to be disrespectful here about this. Ali asked what's about Jordan Peterson's suits. He has really strange suits now. Some of them are multicolored and really weird. In England, I saw him, he had a strange suit. He's experimenting with suit colors and suits, which is interesting because it so defeats the purpose of wearing a suit to begin with, which is to be, in a sense, conventional. So Valkyron says 0.5 would be too fast if it was Ben Shapiro. Chris says 1.25 is good. Well, you tell me once I play it if 1.25 is good. OK, so let's do this. Tell me if the volume is appropriate. They volume my volume and all of that. Let me know in the chat. And yeah, and we'll go from there. One of the things I want to talk to you about today is, I don't know to what degree you would still ally yourself with the anarchist movement. And I want to know to what degree you do. And also, I would like to know what that means. You opened your book with Ayn Rand. I know that's a bit of a tangential intrusion into that question. But she's definitely an arbiter or a spokeswoman for an individualistic stance. So I want to talk to you about Ayn Rand because I have So first, I think the worst thing about this interview, from my perspective, I think, again, Malus achieves what he wants. But from my perspective, the worst thing about this interview is that Malus achieves a conflation in Jordan Peterson's mind between Anarchy and Ayn Rand. That is a certain overlap that he achieves between the two. And he manages, and I don't think Jordan Peterson holds those two separate things. I mean, Jordan has a problem with separating, I think, politics and ethics completely because he's oriented towards hierarchy and organization and subsidiarity, which you'll talk about, and stuff like that, which are all kind of political concepts. But he talks about them in the context of ethics. To begin with, that's a problem for Jordan. And then what happens is that Malus achieves, and I think I don't know that he set out to do this, but it's an achievement for him, the conflation in Jordan Peterson's mind between Ayn Rand's ethics and Anarchy and anarchism, which I think is completely wrong. I think it's a completely distortion of her worldview, and Malus knows that. Well, he knows that she thought that. He might think that she was wrong. That the logic of reasoning from individualism or from rational egoism is Anarchy. But again, in Jordan Peterson, he keeps referring to this. Anarchy and then Ayn Rand, and he keeps going back and forth, and Anarchy and individualism. Anarchy is individualism. That is a unity. And that, unfortunately, is very destructive and very distortative. Ayn Rand's view is not consistent with Anarchy. It not consistent at all with Anarchy. And I don't think that doesn't come across here at all, even though Malus might at some point say something about Ayn Rand not being anarchist, which I'm not sure he does, but maybe he does. That's not the issue. It's not what she held. What is the logical conclusion from her views about ethics? Do they lead to Anarchy? And clearly, they don't. And here, in Jordan's mind, Malus, we know. But in Jordan's mind, the two are conflated. And that is very, very bad. So that's sad that the two are related. You just saw that in this little exchange, where he wants to talk to him about anarchism. But you bring up Ayn Rand in your book, which she does in the first page, I think. And I want to talk to you about Ayn Rand. Some ideas about that. But I'm also curious, you obviously regard a focus on the individual as the appropriate medication against this kind of status, intellectual, Luciferian, and utopianism. And I think that's appropriate. But I want to know what your vision of an alternative to vision, why you adopted that particular vision. Well, I don't know that I have a vision for standing on Central Planner. But that's silly, with all due respect to Michael. I mean, that's silly. Of course, he has a vision. His vision is anarchy. His vision is a society in which there is no government and in which people organize in a variety of different ways and a variety of different people speculate and what that looks like. But there is a vision. It might not be a vision of the absolute concreets of everything. So I think that's anyway. Yeah, I'm right. But what anarchism means to me, and I do 100% regard myself as an anarchism, is it is an approach to life. It is an approach to treating people peacefully. It is a recognition that political authority is inherently illegitimate, although sometimes it is powerful. And it is regarding our existence as an amazing opportunity and to live life to its fullest. Now, here's where he conflates it, right? So here, he's explicitly conflating anarchism with a morality of living life to the fullest. Now, I'm not going to critique his anarchism, right? It's not the purpose of what I'm here for right now. We're not talking about malice and anarchy. I've done the anarchy thing. And soon you'll see an essay that Don Watkins and I wrote about anarchy. It'll be on the guy I debated recently. Anyway, it'll be up on our website sometime in January. I'm not sure exactly when. But I don't want to spend today talking about anarchy. I want to spend it about anarchy. But notice how he's taken the discussion on anarchy, a political concept, a political Brian Kaplan. Thank you. So it'll be on Brian Kaplan's blog at some point. It's a long essay on objections to anarchy. He's taken this a political concept. And he's conflating the political concept with an ethics of living your life to the fullest. And I get it. Malice, to some extent, holds us in his mind like this. But that's really damaging. That's really damaging. Because when I say live your life to the fullest, the implication of that is not anarchy. The implication of that is the counter. It is a government. It is a strong government that does only one thing. But it is a government. And not all government, as you know, I think, is illegitimate. To realize that to take that away from somebody else is a huge moral outrage. So that is kind of what anarchism means to me. And Rand was asked at one point, she goes, if I had to sum up my worldview or whatever term she used in one word, it would be this, individualism. So yes, that is exactly it. Yeah, so that's where it's. OK, so let me delve into that. But it's also just important because Berkman and Goldman, there's this boomer idea that more government. Yeah, I'm going to skip this. That's Berkman and he goes into this. I'm going to skip this a little bit. We have to skip some stuff. So we're going to skip this. Well, that's interesting for all purposes. We're going to go here. He read Rand. I read Rand's books. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I think the third time I read both. And I read them within the last couple of months. Oh, wow. Yeah, so I was. Now and then I'm looking for, I don't know, a romantic read, maybe? That's somewhat intellectually challenging. And now and then I'll pick up one of her books. And that's pretty good because he recognized her for what she is. And she's obviously inspired him. Otherwise, he wouldn't read it three times. So there's something going on here. There's some appeal that she has that attracts Jordan Peterson to her. But he doesn't get it. He doesn't get it. I think he struggles with himself with the idea that he likes the books. He enjoys the books. They provide him with something. And yet he rejects a philosophy. And he's really struggling without a line or that. Curious figure to me because I, Rand, had every reason to despise the Soviet Union and was a very good counter voice to their machinations. But, but, well, and you know, I got introduced to her books. It was quite interesting. So I worked for the socialists when I was like 14 till I was 16 before I. We don't actually get to the butt. But this is interesting. This is how we got introduced to Iron Man. Through socialism, funnily enough. So he is another guy who started out in the left. I didn't know enough to presume that the way I wanted to arrange the world in a utopian fashion was credible. And I figured that out by the time I was about 17. I thought, well, what do you know? You don't have a job. I had little jobs. You know, you don't have a business. You don't have a family. You don't have any education. It's like, what the hell do you know? Really? Right. Anyways, the person who gave me Ayn Rand's books was this woman, Sandy Norley. She was the mother of one of Alberta's recent premiers, a socialist premier. And she was the wife of the only elected socialist official in Alberta when I grew up. And I asked her what she gave me, social incident, Huxley and Orwell. Like, she was an educated woman. And she gave me Ayn Rand's books, which I read when I was like 13. And, you know, I found them compelling. You know, they've got their romantic adventures, fundamentally, with an intellectual bent. And I liked the anti-collective ethos that was embedded in them. And then I've read them, like I said, a couple of times since then. So, here's the problem I have. And you can help me sort this out. Like, I certainly agree with you that a society that isn't predicated on something like recognition of the intrinsic and superordinate worth of the individual is due to catastrophe, right? And so, but then, but here's the rub, as far as I'm concerned. And this is what I really had a problem with, especially this time when I went through Rand's books. It's like, her galt, John Galt, for example, Francisco to Danconia, her, and the, who's the architect? Howard Warke. Warke, Warke, Warke. Her heroic capitalists, essentially. They're not precisely heroic capitalists. They're heroic individualists. Who compete in the free market. Okay, and that's, and that's fine. And you can see the libertarian side of that. And I'm also a free market advocate. And partly because I think that distributed decision-making is a much better computational model than centralized planning, obviously. It's not obvious. I mean, that's Hayek. And it's certainly not Rand's argument. And it's not a very deep argument. The much more fundamental argument, even from that perspective, is that only an individual, only the individual can actually identify his own values and determine how much anything is worth to him. That is, there's no, nobody can figure that out for him because nobody knows him. Only you can make decisions about yourself. It's not a, it's not a computational efficiency issue because if it was, then, as some people are suggesting these days, we could appoint a AI dictator, artificial intelligence, who solves the computational problem, could have this massive computer that can solve all the computations in the world. And yet, AI could not be a central planner, not because it lacks computational power, not because it lacks computational efficiency, but because the reality is that, well, one, it can't think in any meaningful sense, right? It can't actually think. And that's why it's not a computational issue, it's a thinking issue. But it can't make value choices for individuals because only individuals can make value choices for themselves. And that is really, really fundamental. And that is something that he should have been stopped on right here and it should have been told to him, right? So Hayek is right as far as it goes, but making it into a computational problem, and I think Michael in a second will reinforce this, making it into a computational problem makes the issue human ignorance or the issue of limited human ability to compute, the limit of human reason as Hayek would state it. And that's not the issue. This is not the limitations. The issue is the fact that only individuals can value and therefore only individuals can know what their values are and only individuals can know what worth their values have to them. So every value has to be to whom and for what? And no central planner can answer that question. It doesn't know what my values are for and how much I'm willing, what I'm willing to do for them, how important they are. He doesn't have my value Hayek. And you probably can't even get that from a questionnaire. So, and my values change all the time and they change with context, circumstances. And of course, as Bonnie says, we're volitional animals so we change our minds. And no central planner can do that, can get into our mind. I guess if we're all like in the matrix connected, our brains are connected and they can read our minds, OK, so then maybe all our needs can be, oh, our wants, desires can be satisfied. But yeah. Well, yeah, it should be. But it should be. It's not obvious to Utopia and Luciferian intellects, but it's obvious even if you just think about it from a computational perspective. He has great one-liners, who was it Luciferian, Utopian Luciferian, something or the other. I mean, you've got to give it, he's a master at one-liners and it wood smithing and putting. Smartest person is ignorant of 99.99% of knowledge. Yes, exactly. Yeah, so the smartest person is ignorant of 99.99% of knowledge. That's not an argument for anything. That's not an argument for anything. So, I mean, that's the problem. It's the Hayekian argument, which is wrong and belittles human reason and human capacity. And if I had, again, an AI who was not ignorant of 99.99% of knowledge, would that be OK then? Would he be able to master plan, essentially plan the universe? Of course not. Exactly, that's exactly it. It's precisely why you want to distribute it. OK, so that's partly what I wanted to go into. So now the random. It's not exactly to say distributed. You want it individualized. You want individuals making decisions for themselves because only individuals know what they want. Only individuals know what their values are. Only individuals know what their life requires. So it's not an issue of distributed. It's an issue of individuated. Indian heroes identify themselves as fervent individualists. And you stalk me as soon as I get any of this wrong in some way, you don't disagree with. They're pursuing their own selfish ethos. OK, so that's the rub to me. And I'm going to think about this psychologically and neurophysiologically, just to make it complicated. OK, so the first question would be, well, what exactly do you mean by the individual and the self? And here there's another video of him going into the fact that there is no such thing as a self or individual because what you are right now is not the same as what you're going to be in a year. So it's two individuals. It's not exactly any individual, which is nonsense and completely wrong in terms of how you frame it. But here he takes it in a different direction, which is a little all over the place. So be patient. OK, so when a child develops, let's say, when a child first emerges into the world, they're essentially a system of somewhat disconnected primary instinctual sub-personalities. So with the nascent possibility of a uniting ego, identity, personality, something like, a continuity of memory across time. But that has to emerge. Now, it seems to emerge as a consequence of neurophysiological development and experiential maturation. And so the child comes equipped into the world, say, with a sucking reflex because its mouth and tongue are very wired up. So that's where the child is most conscious. That's why kids, when they can't put everything in their mouth because they can feel it and investigate it, far before they have control over their eyes or their arms because their arms sort of float around. So what happens is they're born as a set of somewhat independent systems. And then the independent systems, partly under the influence of social demand, integrate themselves. Now, and then by the time a child is two, that child is still mostly disintegrated emotional systems. And so if you watch a two-year-old, and I use two for a specific reason, what you see is that they cycle through basic motivational states. One of the challenges of being interviewed by Jordan Peterson as he goes on in these rants, and you have to follow it, and you have to figure out on the spot, sitting there, how you're going to respond. And that is really, really, really hard to do. Because what's he talking about? Now, somebody's saying makes kind of sense. I've heard it now three times. But imagine hearing it just once as you are. I mean, how many of you know what he's talking about? And it's, what's the question? Where is he going with this? Very difficult. So a child is often like a child whose demand-oriented motivational states are satiated will play and play and explore. But then they get tired, and they'll cry. Or they'll get hungry, and they'll cry. Or they'll get angry, and they'll have a tantrum. Or they're burst into tears. Well, I said they'll cry. Or they'll get anxious. And so they're cycling through these primary motivational states. Now, we understand that to some degree, neurophysiologically, because the older the brain system, the more likely it is to be operative in infancy. So the rage system, or the system that mediates anxiety, or the system that mediates pain, those come into being pretty early. But it's hard for them to get integrated. OK, now, here's the problem. And I don't know how to distinguish individualism from hedonism. And I don't know how to distinguish hedonism from possession by one of these lower-order motivational states. So when we ran. So that's a really good question, right? And he doesn't. He doesn't know how to distinguish egoism or selfishness or self-interest from hedonism or from one of these lower states, the perceptual level or the emotional states. And what, of course, what he's missing here and what malice doesn't bring up and won't bring up and is a standard, human survival, human flourishing, human happiness, the standard. And the integrating virtue, rationality. So what is differentiated selfishness from hedonism? Well, one is the standard. Is this necessary for human survival? Is it necessary for human flourishing? Is it necessary for human survival for a human being, i.e., for conceptual being? And how do we know whether something is necessary or not? How do we know whether or not something is hedonistic, maybe even self-destructive versus something that is productive and building and virtuous? Well, we know by the standard of human life, by the standard of human flourishing. And we know that through the use of reason, the application of reason, by rationally figuring out, by looking at reality, by looking at what kind of animal human beings are, what their nature is, what kind of action will lead to positive outcomes, what kind of actions lead to negative outcomes. And that is the only way we can figure out what is in our self-interest, what selfishness means. But that's what needs to be explained to Jordan. I mean, and this would have been such a perfect place to do it, because he's raising the right questions. He's thinking about the right issues. Now, I don't know if he could accept it. I don't know if he could integrate it, because his mind is all over the place. But what an opportunity you have here to actually discuss what it is about selfishness that makes it not hedonism and what it is that selfishness is and what it even means. In other words, what he really means in a sense of, again, human survival, human flourishing. And that just doesn't happen. So it's a massive blown opportunity to actually articulate what needs to be articulated in this context. And of course, the whole idea of reason, the whole idea of rationality, as the integrator is so crucial in the means by which you survive, reason as a means of survival, a basic means of survival, as the LNP puts it, that needs to be said here. That needs to be here. And again, missed opportunity. It doesn't come up. There's none of it there. Again, I give credit to Jordan. He's asking the right questions. He's conflicted here between those ingrained, almost animalistic tendencies that we may be born with and hedonism and this concept of selfishness and how do they relate? And what's it? Yes, that's a good question. But he needs an answer and he doesn't get one. He says we should be able to pursue our own selfish needs. She's kind of taking a class with us. She says selfish needs. She says self-interest. OK, OK, so fine. OK, OK, so that, no. Well, no, I would say she moves between those two because her heart says needs. She never says needs, which is true. But that's not the point. It's not the point here is not the needs. The point here is not the needs. The point is here, what does selfishness mean? What does it mean? Where does it come from? And what is the measure by which we can say something is selfish and something is not? What is the objective standard for determining what is hedonistic? What is animalistic, if you will? And what is selfish? That's what needs. That's the point that needs to be made here. And now they go into this complete sidetrack on needs, which is not essential. Not essential, not that important. I mean, it's good to point out that she doesn't talk about selfish needs. But it's not, again, blown opportunity. OK, she may never say needs. OK, OK, right, right, fair enough. OK, OK, so I'll back off on the needs side. That was the old chosen. And she does. She makes absolutely bloody sure. Well, wait a second. She says your needs are not a blank check on my needs. I know, I know, but does she say simultaneously that I have no right to pursue my needs? She doesn't use that word. She says you pursue your self-interest to the best of your ability. OK, but she also uses the word selfish. Yes. OK, OK, so fine. It's an incredible way. Right, OK, absolutely, absolutely. And I would just want to make sure that we're. But this is a great opportunity to explain what selfish is. And more importantly, when it comes to what the context is and what the standard is, the standard of all value, your life as a conceptual being. And that's. Seating on grounds that we both regard as appropriate. So the liberal types, the Scottish liberals believe that if people were encouraged to pursue their self-interest, that that would produce a self-regulating system. Now, Ramsey. See, now he goes to politics. So he's going from selfishness quite individual to selfishness as a system, Adam Smith and so on. And again, here's another opportunity, differentiate I ran from the Scottish. Adam Smith and Scots would say, if Adam Smith and Scots say, if everybody pursues their self-interest, while that in and of itself is not good, it actually produces a better society. But Rand rejects that whole formulation. Rand's view is self-interest is the good. It is the good. There's nothing else in terms of good other than to pursue your self-interest. And yes, if every individual pursues his self-interest, a social group is better off. But that's not the reason. That's the consequence. And it's, again, frustrating that he doesn't get accounted to that. That is, he's pitching softballs here. He doesn't need to be answered. And every time he does this, there's a great opportunity to make an interesting point about Rand. Now again, as I said in the beginning, it's not Malice's job. He's not here to defend. He's here to defend Anarchy and defend his book in communism. I get it. In that sense, I'm not criticizing Malice. It's just, ugh, it's unfortunate. It's just unfortunate he's not talking. Jordan Peterson is not talking to an objectivist and asking these exact questions to an objectivist. Andrew says, you're on these only softballs to serious objectivists. Yes, I agree. But it's too bad he's not talking to serious objectivists. That would be cool. You accept that as a proposition? Yes. So if people are freely able to pursue their self-interest, then a system of free exchange will emerge out of that that has the appropriate qualities of governance. And what we would say is, what a serious objectivist somebody says, is yes, only, and that system emerges, that system emerges when and if individual rights are protected. That is, as long as I protect it from the goon, the thief, the bad guy who is going to violate people's rights. Ali says, why blame him? Malice JP doesn't let him talk and keep projecting his wrong ideas and getting short answers. Not a big fan of you. No, I mean, Malice can talk, as you'll see in a little bit. He talks. He has no problem talking. And Jordan Peterson will let him speak when Malice talks. And Malice is fine with interjecting. Like when he said needs, she doesn't talk about needs. He can interject, and he can keep going. So I don't think this is because of JP. I think Malice is missing opportunities here partially because I don't think he knows the material deeply, partially because he's not motivated. Because when you get an anarchy, which I'm not going to play here, but when he gets to the issue of anarchy, he is very articulate and goes on and on and on as long as he wants to. So I don't think this is about Malice being too shy or too differential, or JP Morgan being, or JP Jordan Peterson being too, I don't know, not letting him speak. I think this is more about what his priorities are, what he wants to talk about, what he wants to emphasize. All right. All right. Let's see. We're going to go on a little bit, and then I'm going to skip ahead. Let me just see. Yeah, there's another 30 minutes of this. She says this explicitly on Donahue. She was saying that if people pursued their own self-interest, there wouldn't be any oppression. There wouldn't be more. There wouldn't be any headless. Because there should be less than she goes. There wouldn't be any headless. Well, look, when I'm negotiating with someone. But it's also the case, whoops. I just wiped that out. What did I do? It's also the case that she believed that governance needs to exist. Government needs to exist. Protecting individual rights needs to happen. But of course, Malice doesn't believe in that, doesn't agree with that. All right, let's see. What do I want to take us? Let's go to 128. I mean, there's other stuff here. But I'm just going to skip this. 127, 128, subsidiarity, no, I want to go to 133 once in. I mean, I think, well, anyway, Malice brings up the enlightenment a couple of times. And he's undermining the enlightenment constantly, which, again, is so wrong. And it's just a misrepresentation of the enlightenment. But it undermines Rand's key idea about morality and about life, which is the value of reason, the value of rational thought. And Malice is undermining that. And I think that's purposefully, because he obviously disagrees. He says at some point, he disagrees with Iron Man. He says something about, Iron Man thinks that if we all got together and we had exactly the same facts, we don't come to exactly this inclusion, which is just not true. Because, again, we have different values. We don't come to the same conclusion until it's right or wrong. We don't come to the same conclusion until it's a science. Does he disagree about science? So what exactly is it that we wouldn't come to the same conclusion around? Time preference into it. You're starting to work in the domain that implicitly assumes that there is a higher order integration. So these initial systems, these initial motivational systems, they're very short-term. And they want short-term gratification. So when a baby wails when it crops, it wants to be satisfied now. But can I say one thing? This is the distinction Rand draws between hedonism and her philosophy, because she thinks that the more moral a person, the more long-range his thought. Whereas hedonism is very much a pleasure at the moment. And I'm going to defend hedonism a little bit. Yeah, and I think that's right. But again, he never explains what the context is. That is, long-range for what? Long-range in what? He talks about, Malus brings up integrity, which I think is good. He brings up the importance of integrity. But again, without life, without life, without flourishing survival as the standard, you can't really get what integrity is for. He brings up a lot, and Jordan Peterson likes this, this idea of, what do you call it, of, you know, after you make a choice, thinking back and being proud of that and not being proud of it, or about the road less taken, or the road you took, or it didn't take, and not being embarrassed by what you've done in the past. But by what standard? Again, you need a standard for all these things. And the standard is in ranch morality, and the standard is ultimately life rational of a rational being. The life of a rational being, that is the standard. You can't undermine reason and rationality and still hold that standard, but it has to be made clear. It has to be made explicit. Because the term gets a bad rap? Hedonism isn't coke orgies. Hedonism is Martha Stewart, where you're having coffee and then book club with your friends and having the pleasure. That's not right. Hedonism is, you know, the og, the Martha Stewart and having a nice drinking, drinking something nice and reading a book. That's pleasure. Pleasure and hedonism are not the same thing. Hedonism is an ism. It is the elevation of momentary pleasure above all else. So again, there's a, he's wrong. What can I say? That's more, okay, but I would put, you can actually separate those technically. Sure, but the point is, yeah. Because that kind of hedonism would be more aesthetic again. Sure. Right, and it's more sophisticated. Pleasure per se isn't bad. Right, with these Epicurean ideas of hedonism, how it was pitched, you know, thousands of years ago, it wasn't at all this maximizing pleasure in just life and life. In the moment. Right, right, right. Okay, so we'll just define the kind of hedonism that we're objecting to as blinkered by that short term. But I also hate this kind of wasp suspicion of hedonism, this pure talent, like if you're having pleasure and you're doing something wrong. And it's like, pleasure is wonderful, people should do it more in the sense of, I'm reading a nice book, I'm enjoying a fire, I'm having it walk with my friends. These are all the same things. Yeah, well everything in this place is the proper notion for that, right? Right, and so the demand for hedonic gratification shouldn't be put forward in a manner that sacrifices the overall integrity. It's the reward, yeah, yeah. I worked hard and now I get to watch a stupid TV show and not feel any guilt about it because I did my work for today. Right, right, well, and it sniffs. I have no shame about it. Yeah, yeah, well the psychologists know it's their wise that you want to have all the forms of motivation that are available to you working. If you've got an alternative of watching a stupid TV show or a clever TV show that's entertaining, it doesn't require a lot, it doesn't require any effort, but it's just a little, just bad, why would you go with a stupid one and why shouldn't you feel a little embarrassed about listening to the stupid one? It just doesn't, none of this is really that, it's not right, it's just everything here is loose. There's very little, it doesn't, there's very little accuracy here because again, there's no standard. To push you forward and certainly the draw, so technically the source of reward that people work hardest for isn't satiation reward. They would if they were starving. Like you can put animals and human beings into a situation where they work but single-mindedly for satiation, right? Like if you haven't had anything to drink for two weeks, you're gonna be pretty motivated. That aside. And this is something the Soviets understood very well. System that mediates voluntary exploratory activity, right? So it's a very ancient system, it emerges, it's hypothalamic, hypothalamus is a part of the brain that sits right on top of this spinal cord. It's absolutely ancient system and the pleasure that we generally are most motivated by does activate these systems. And if you want people to be actively engaged in a meaningful way in their own life and in their social pursuits, then you wanna make sure that that system is operating in the direction of those pursuits, right? So then one of the things that happens when people make an agreement is that they set up a shared aim, right? So our aim today was to have an interesting conversation that we could share with people. Okay, so that sets up our nervous system. So as long as we're uttering words in a manner that moves us towards that aim, then we're gonna stay engaged and enthusiastic because that, well, because that, the system that produces enthusiasm and engagement is now on board in relationship to that aim. Okay, so imagine this then, so that your aim becomes the participation in the social system that's optimally balanced when people are pursuing their enlightened self-interest in a manner that's of maximal social utility that stretches across the longest possible time span. You see, I can't, he can't really hold it, right? So it has to be enlightened self-interest, can't just be self-interest. So he has to be enlightened and enlightened self-interest because that is a way to make it less self-interested in some way. It's a little soft, it's such a feeling, it's good. And then he has to be in the social utility. He has to be in this whole thing. And Malice says, I don't have any use for social utility. I don't like social utility, which is great, absolutely. Good for him. Again, why? What's the purpose? What's wrong with social utility? There's not a lot of getting into that really in great depth. But let me just skip a little bit of a head because we're going late here. Someone that your family can admire and rely on knowing that when it's the fan, they'll be in a position to reciprocate. Do you want to be that provider or that source of strength? Again, this is your opportunity to do that person. Or you want to be the guy who's not there for his kids. You have that opportunity too. And at the end of the day, you're going to have to look yourself in the mirror or avoiding our contact in the mirror and face. We're waking up at three in the morning being tormented by your conscience. Yeah, but where does this conscience come from? Right, this conscience is, you have to have a standard of value to have a conscience. But what is the standard of value? What is the value system that you've adopted? And does Rand have a value system that causes you to have this conscience? All of that is floating. None of it has been defined. None of it has been explained. And it's floating. So the conversation is going nowhere and it doesn't really integrate into anything. Do you still have one? Or are you deadening it with alcohol or whatever the situation might be? So yeah, that's how we got it. Okay, so then that was what I was trying to portray as a social good. But I mean, the social good is the consequence, not the goal. How about the good is the harmony between the social manifestation and the individual manifestation? That's, by the way, one of the better things he said, social good is the consequence, not the goal. I agree with that. That's the Adam Smith thing, right? Society somehow better off, however you want to measure it, but that's not the goal of the action. And he's absolutely right. He brings it in too little, too late in some ways. It's, explain, articulate. What do you mean? So look, part of the reason I've been thinking this through is because I think that the modern definition of mental health as subjective is totally wrong. Because I think that mental health is actually the harmony in that hierarchy of being and not something that you have in your head. I mean, that's wrong. It is the harmony, it's exactly right. I mean, Jordan Peterson is completely in the right direction here. Philosophy, objectivism, so I completely agree with you. I don't, I think anytime you're introducing subjectivism to a large extent, you're treading on thin ice. Okay, so then let's go to the object, objective in relationship to what? Like, where's the objective reality that Rand's pattern of behavior is aiming to, to what would you say, to adapt to? And what's the answer there? What is the, I mean, it's just a great question. Another one of these great questions that Jordan was asking, what is the objective reality that Rand's pattern of behavior is aiming towards? In other words, what is the objective reality that her morality is aiming towards? And this is where the answer, sorry, Michael, but the answer has to be life. The objective standards by which life, what life requires, what nature requires of us as a particular animal to do in order to achieve life, to achieve flourishing, what particular being with a particular nature, with a particular biology, with a particular kind of brain, mind, what do you wanna call it? And nature requires, reality requires that we pursue certain values using certain virtues to achieve life, that's the particular reality. That's the answer to what Jordan is asking. Not what malice is. Everywhere, we live in it, there's nowhere else to go. Okay, so that seems to- So it's true, this is reality, but Jordan is asking something very particular, and he's frustrated, I'm frustrated, because he's not getting the answer. But that's not good enough in the context of morality. What is, what are we striving towards? It needs to be the same notion as this subsidiary structure. And now he's going to politics again. So you've got your life, let's say. Well, he's my goat. It's a long run. Sure. Your narrow individuality is integrated into the broader dyad of that group. Yeah, we're all Venn diagrams. Okay, okay. Then you do that with your family. There's you and your coworkers, there's you and your employees, there's you and your friends, there's you and your- I mean, all Venn diagrams, kind of, right? Daughter, your wife. Your new city, your town. Yes, yes. Right, okay. You and your peers. Right, so we agree on that. Okay, so of course. But again, all Venn diagrams oriented towards what? Right, so my Venn diagram with my coworkers is oriented towards what? Each one of them has an orientation, but they're all consistent with my self-interest because they're all oriented towards my life. So that is so missing. Oh wait, we've got a minute and a half. That's the polity that I'm thinking about. So how do you- It's fluid. It's not what, it changes all the- Right, but- You can put a job- Right, right, right. Get divorced. Right, but there's principle. It's not entirely fluid because- No, it's not entirely fluid. Right, right. It's, hopefully, it's optimally fluid. Sure. It's principles. Jordan is saying, what are they? Right, right, okay. So that's fine. And that optimal, I would say, part of the marker of its optimality is fluidity. Yes. Right, right. That's why the dow is water, right? It's not stone. It has this capacity to adapt and- It's not that it doesn't cut your losses and that's fine. Right? The sunk cost, just because you've been in a relationship for 10 years, does not mean well as your continuing in perpetuity. Right, well- At least any relationship. I don't mean marriage. It could be just your contract or your work with your lawyers. Right, well, so your point seems to me to be that your alliance and any of those subsidiary organizations shouldn't be a prison, correct, right? But that's something that thrives and needs maintenance and is reborn every single day. But again, the standard is life, life, happiness, flourishing, success. That's how you measure whether you should invest in it or not. Now, you guys are talking about Jordan getting over excited and emotional and whatever. Remember, this is 1.25 speed so this is not his normal speed. So it's not fair to judge you. Like every single day, anyone has the option to get divorced or to not talk to their candidates or to fire whoever- Okay, so if you accept the necessity of these embedded relationships- Yes, of course. Multiple embedded relationships. Okay, so why do you conceptualize that? Why exactly? I'm not trying to catch you out here, I'm curious. Well, why do you conceptualize that as anarchy? Because it's voluntary. Yeah, you see, this is where Jordan, this is where this conflation of anarchy and selfishness, it makes me mad. I mean, I was hoping he would say, why do you conceptualize that as selfishness or self-interest? But he goes to the political, he goes to the anarchy and I think it goes off track at that point. So, I mean, the rest is about anarchy and about stuff, so I'll let you guys watch it if you want. My interest was in the more, Jordan was actually asking good questions getting deep into some important issues related to self-interest, related to selfishness. There was an opportunity here to actually articulate a case for Rand's morality while moral code based on the, based on human life, based on the survival, based on flourishing, why such a moral code is needed, why that is the measure of all things, that is the measure of human behavior, why that is what creates this conscience. And if you have the wrong values, you can have a conscience that's no good, that is, you don't have implicit in you in your consciousness, in your conscience, the right morality, you have to first adopt the right morality if you have the right conscience. But anyway, that's a whole other story. All right.