 Hey everyone, welcome back to the 21 convention. Please give him a welcoming round of applause Stand up if you feel like it and work on your posture for him. James steal the second ladies and gentlemen. Here he comes Like am I good cool Okay guys and the first talk I'm gonna do for you today I'm gonna do a talk tomorrow as well going into a bit of specifics around my research and my He's asked me to talk about is specifically philosophy and more specifically I'm Rand's philosophy, which is objectivism I'm a big proponent of I'm Rand's philosophies I first got introduced to Atlas shrugged through reading kind of Mike Mensa's work So don't know if any of you familiar with Mike Mensa heavy-duty high-intensity training coming from an exercise physiology background I first got involved with that after getting involved with Arthur Jones moving through all that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and Realized that he applied a very sort of philosophical approach to his pursuit of knowledge in that specific area and I kind of got it got more involved learn the name. I'm Rand found her works read out with shrugs for the first time year or a year and a half or so ago and It really kind of resounded with me the message in it and the underlying philosophy Maybe you want to learn more about it and learn about how to apply in my life And you know essentially how to live my life So what I'm going to do today is kind of go through if you can see the slides Hopefully if not then just have to rely on me speaking and hopefully hopefully it will go go through fine And I ended up caught writing a bit of an essay for my notes because I didn't want to leave any kind of like stone Unturned I felt that there was so much depth that needs to kind of be go gone into with the specifics of the philosophy and learning how the fundamentals all affect each other that I Needed quite a lot of detail in it. So I apologize if it looks like I'm kind of relying on my notes a lot I was kind of hoping for a podium or something to kind of maybe you know speak from but I'm gonna have to kind of rely on Just just holding it here now. So excuse excuse that anyway. Yeah, is that working cool? I don't know. I'll hold it and see how I go actually I'll try not to wave it around too much. Oh, I think I have been already Okay, so like I said, I'm a PhD student my specific area is exercise for the geology lower back pain and how the two are related But philosophy for me is a big interest. So this talk is Just clarify. I've no academic training and philosophy at all. Everything I've learned is self-taught So that's why I've kind of made the clarification. This is this is an arm chairs Philosophers perspective I'm self-taught taught in this and I've went out and sought the information much like you guys are Come to this convention learning about the various topics that the speakers are talking on. So I want to kind of share that with you okay, so Just to kind of give you a brief outline. I'm I tend to do academic conferences just because PhD stuff So everything has a has an outline. So excuse the formatting if it if it's a bit sort of like bland Okay, so so first of all, we're going to clarify like what it what is philosophy and you know, why is it even important? You know, why do we need to know about philosophy? You know, is it self-evident or is it kind of subconscious or do we need a conscious awareness of it and how it pertains to our lives? Then we're going to go through and actually introduce Objectivism as a philosophy in itself and we're going to go through all the various different areas of Objectivism through a kind of logical approach and we're going to discuss what logic is and how it kind of like works into the philosophy as well So we're going to go through the main sort of areas metaphysics epistemology Ethics and politics and we're going to see how they kind of all interrelate and build what I am rank called a philosophy for Life on earth and like Anthony said life on earth as a man is what this conference conference is about I'm just going to quickly sit my glasses on because I can't I'm sure sorry, and I can't read the screen I'd like to be able to sit That's not going to affect the lights at all. Is it going to reflect too much? That's better. I can see it and I can see you know everything was blurry before And then we're going to kind of conclude just by looking at the kind of simple choices that we face in our lives and the very sort of like prominent conflicts that have a philosophical origin and how we can use this structure of philosophy to kind of like This kind of figure out what choices we need to make when it comes to these conflicts and what choices are most appropriate Okay, so first of all What is philosophy and and why is it important? Philosophy pertains to everything and and this this quote from I am ran sums it up very well Philosophy studies the fundamental nature of existence and of man and of man and of man's relationship to existence So fundamentally Philosophy deals with how you live your life and how how you relate to the world around around you as a man or as an individual You know if you wish to live your life, you can't avoid the necessity of philosophy philosophy underpins everything Man's life relies upon philosophy If he's to know how he should live it You know everything you do every action you take assumes some underlying principles by which you take those actions Some fundamental principles and that's what philosophy predominantly deals with it deals with fundamentals The basic irreducible primary concepts That kind of dictate how we live our lives like I said the choices we make what we do how we think how we act how we live You know some examples could pertain to you guys come into this conference here You want to learn something you want to learn something about the nature of reality You want to learn something about particular subjects particular topics you want to know how to apply it You know it could be anything successful of women starting successful business entrepreneurship exercise nutrition What philosophy deals with is what that subject is how it relates to you and how you actually find out that information And know what's true and what actually works. You know how reality it works It essentially it's how to live Yeah, briefly then what I'm round is um predominantly an author And she had this vision of like Anthony said of man as a hero man as an individual man Living his life as he deems by his own standards and for his own pursuit of happiness and She ripped several novels including atlas shrugged, which is my personal favorite and I was so you know, I've got such a conviction about the philosophy that I went as far as having the the tattoo of atlas on my arm Fountainhead, which I know is anthony's personal favorite. Um, there's actually a film about it I haven't seen it, but it's supposed to be really good Um and other other various novels which she wrote before then Delving into will people saw read her novels and they were aware that that the heroes She kind of had no novels at the end of the businessman the successful people were Different to what predominant sort of like doctrine and dogma and conventional wisdom whatever that is that we all kind of like Try and combat by coming to this thing um, she kind of like Showed this kind of like completely power completely um independent hero And people wanted to know well, you know, what what under what philosophy, you know It can you explain it in more detail What philosophy underlies your stories and what philosophy underlies your heroes? What philosophy underlies man in your vision? Um, so that that's what i'm rounded and she built upon that um by writing more philosophical texts to to explain her philosophy And that's what i'm gonna Try and do justice to to today. So there'll be a few quotes by and rand um Some of them from her novels and some of them from her her philosophical works Okay, so like i was saying philosophy underpins life essentially now for most of you, you know, you may not have a You know real deep interest in understanding particular philosophical constructs and philosophical frameworks You know, you may not have an interest in going out of your way yourself to kind of like Search the literature read the books and that sort of thing But regardless of whether you want to go out of your way and learn it You've got to appreciate that it underpins everything you do every action you take every action that anyone else takes Your perspective on reality is dictated by your philosophical principles, whether you're consciously aware of them or not this quote by um The economist john maynard keens. I think despite his Touchy uh economic theories. Um, I think it quite quite well sums up That kind of situation he says and i quote the ideas of economists and political philosophers Both when they're right and when they're wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood Indeed the world is ruled by little else Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economists An economist there is is synonymous with with philosopher economy is dictated by philosophical principles much like everything else i'm rand had her own quote as well which he used Who sets the tone of a culture a small handful of men the philosophers Others follow their lead either by conviction or by default So where where I present the philosophical framework today. I want you guys to understand it And either accept or reject it based on your own convictions. Uh, hopefully i'll do a good enough job to persuade you So introducing objectivism Most people who kind of Have any sort of like perception of philosophy have a very sort of like superficial one They don't really go into the details of it. They know the conflicts that are that exist in this kind of world But they don't really kind of like reduce it down to what the base principles are and how that affects things They see these various conceptual conflicts and never really work it out now Dr. Onkar Gatte, I don't know if any of you have heard of him, but that's irrelevant but he's a a fellow at the iron rand institute, which is an educational establishment for helping portray iron rands philosophical ideas Um, he did it did a lecture similar to what i'm doing now on introducing objectivism And he used a kind of format where he, uh, reduced the latter conflicts That we see in today's world, which we'll discuss in in more detail as we go through back to their irreducible Fundamentals the kind of primaries the fundamentals that the philosophy deals with now In the structure of his lecture there was a kind of contextual, um series of lectures that discuss these topics in in detail beforehand So it was very easy to kind of do that But what I wanted to do was show you that there's actually a logical process By which we can start at the beginning And move towards the end and figure out how to how to make the choices that come up in these later conflicts so Use the example in 1962 at the shrug sales conference I'm ram was asked to stand on one foot and give the basics of her philosophy and so she did as follows She said metaphysics is objective reality epistemology reason Ethics self-interest or rational self-interest to be more appropriate And politics is capitalism or individualism Now I think she was acutely aware Of the order in which she mentioned those because that was the exact order in which she mentioned the metaphysics epistemology ethics politics And I think although she didn't explicitly state it She was acutely aware of this process of logic by which each preceding branch of Sorry philosophy Actually linked in to the next branch of philosophy And created this framework by which we can answer all of these questions So what I want to do is go through it in this logical process starting with Metaphysics working through to epistemology ethics and ending on politics and showing you how The answers we get from each preceding branch dictates the answers we should get in the next branch of philosophy So we'll discuss each of the conflicts that kind of arise then So starting with metaphysics Any discussion of philosophy has to start with metaphysics if you will it's the most fundamental of fundamentals if that kind of makes sense Metaphysics deals with The fundamental nature of reality, you know The universe as a whole as it as it exists as we perceive it Basically reality, you know, it's it's no simpler way to dictate to express it than that And what it deals with most specifically is axioms or axiomatic concepts Now Those axioms are usually considered self-evident truths. That is that they're obvious We don't need any clarification from them But the problem with that is it kind of dictates it or presumes that there's some sort of Omniscience or omnipotence that gives us knowledge without our perception of it without our actual creation of it The thing is axioms are graphs conceptually as is all of our knowledge which we'll discuss at some point You can perceive reality, but to understand it you have to conceptualize it Now the basic Concepts that we deal with deal with when setting up this philosophical framework The axiomatic concepts of existence identity and consciousness Now our perception of reality as it exists Is fundamentally dictated by these concepts That existence exists and it has an identity and that you're conscious of its existence The combination of the concepts leads to the following statement Something exists of which I am conscious and I must discover its identity now some other philosophers I don't know if any of you are aware of René Descartes No, I'm sure you've probably all heard the phrase I think therefore I am Yeah Bullshit fundamentally wrong the problem with it is is That statement suggests that our act of being conscious of perceiving reality is what creates reality That's fundamentally wrong consciousness is an attribute. It's an identity We are an existent. We're man and we have consciousness as a characteristic We exist independent of consciousness. Some people aren't conscious yet. They still exist We don't create consciousness through our perception of reality And so these axioms are explicit in any states of awareness. The statement I am therefore I think is probably more appropriate Now some some people would argue that These concepts are arbitrary in themselves much like like Descartes statement that reality is created by our consciousness But the problem here is anyone who tries to disprove these concepts has to by necessity invoke them To disprove them you can't disprove existence from non-existence You can't disprove consciousness from unconsciousness There's it's a logical contradiction So you can't logically argue against these axioms. They're self-evident in the respect that existence exists and we're conscious of it So what is logic logic is non-contradictory? identification If you try and argue that consciousness doesn't exist You have to argue it from a state of consciousness You can't and that's a contradiction because you're invoking that you yourself don't exist or your consciousness doesn't exist It just doesn't make sense anyway So i'm ran kind of use this statement or Aristotle originally used this statement that a is a or existence exists Something is what it is and it can't be nothing else It may have a specific identity and that you may be able to find out by that is its characteristics We are man. We exist. We have consciousness as an identity so the primary conflict in any Philosophical framework metaphysically is always whether we accept the original axiom that existence exists Or whether we accept non-existence its existence versus non-existence And really there's only one choice that we can make So fundamentally all philosophical frameworks have to be dictated by the fact that existence exists and we're conscious of it So i'm ran some summed it up in layman's terms is nature to be commanded must be obeyed nice and simple Doesn't matter what your wishes whims feelings are existence exists independent of those you can't Wish that something's going to fall from the sky or wish that you're going to be be successful You have to adhere to the principles of reality You have to do things that you know and you can learn are going to make a difference And you know that are going to exert an effect based upon the fundamental nature of reality and your relationship to it Just a quote from atlas shrug then my favorite book Existence exists and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms That something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness Consciousness being the faculty of possessed seething that which exists I think that sums it up very well. What I've hopefully summed up quite well anyway, we'll see Right moving on from metaphysics and that fundamental conflict of existence versus non-existence We can move on to epistemology First of all, what is epistemology? Epistemology is quite literally the study of knowledge And it asks various questions such as what is knowledge? What you know Not what you believe or what you wish but what you actually know what you know is true How we acquire knowledge, you know, what process do we utilize? That actually results in us knowing something knowing that something is true knowing that something is correct knowing a fact of reality And how do we know what we know? Where does our knowledge actually come from? Does it come from reality? Or does it come from some omniscient, some omnipotent being who knows all independent of reality? To know something is true is to be certain in the context of existing information that something is true One thing to accept first of all is or even though we can accept that existence exists The fact that our perception of it is correct is by no means a given We're infallible unfortunately, you know, we could perceive things incorrectly So it's interesting. It's important to understand that the knowledge we have is based in concepts But those concepts could be based on flawed perceptions So to say something is true is always in the basis of existing knowledge the current context of your knowledge the extent of your knowledge And also to say something that is knowledge implies that you can prove it that you've got evidence in reality of that existing Okay, so like I said knowledge is conceptual and its validity depends on concepts So What is our knowledge based on then? Initially all concept all knowledge is based on our perceptual level of awareness our consciousness our awareness of reality We perceive reality through our consciousness and we get information from reality about the nature of something existing And and of its identity of its characteristics So how do we perceive reality? We use two forms of forms we have our senses which is our cognition and we have measurements as well Now measurements are important because At perceptual level we can only perceive so much, you know, you can see the pillars walls You can see everyone next to you But we know From measurement and from the application of science that things exist on a smaller level than we can actually directly perceive And things exist on a larger scale than we can directly Bear witness to and perceive as well But we can still know about them because we can apply a process of mathematics and science And use a process of measurement to understand our relationship to the very small and very big as well So to assume that all knowledge is based on Our senses is incorrect. It's based upon Cognition our senses and measurement our application of a method of mathematics and science to it The next stage of knowledge is always how we form concepts. So we perceive reality as existence We perceive individuals we perceive individual parts of reality Then what we do is we learn its identity i.e. its characteristics and we draw relationships between it So for example, all of you out there, you're all men and I can see that but you're all individuals as well You're all individual existence, but there are various characteristics That are related between you all that I can draw links from and form the concept of man You're all men yet. You're all individuals at the same time This is how we kind of like integrate further knowledge into our minds instead of just looking at you all and individually picking out Each individual person I can create the concept in my mind of man And understand that that incorporates everyone in this room. There's no other women in this room as a So that's kind of how we can build upon our knowledge and it's how our knowledge works Existent learning its identity Forming it into a unit and extrapolating from that into a concept And we create our concepts via those means now If anyone wants to learn more about epistemology, I understand it's not exactly the most exciting concept Or subject rather then I would recommend reading iron rand's book and introduction to objectivist epistemology This is a basic kind of glazing over it, but it highlights the main point that Our knowledge is based in reality Our knowledge is based on what exists rather than what doesn't exist or what we want to exist to what we wish exists So the primary conflict in epistemology always comes down to reason and faith Another quote to kind of highlight that reason integrates man's perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions Thus raising man's knowledge from perceptual level which he shares with other animals to the conceptual level which he alone can reach The method which reason employs in this process is called logic and logic is the art of non contradictory identification So like we said it's about the ability to perceive reality and draw relationships between objects and not to contradict yourself in the process Faith is not based in reality unfortunately. Faith can never claim to hold knowledge I don't want to piss anyone off who holds faith as some sort of value, but this is my my perception The logic, surely that is a faith in itself Logic? Yeah, you were saying that faith is bullshit Surely we are having faith in that logic, so that would be The problem is it's coming back to what we base epistemology on What we base how we gain knowledge on So we go back to the original metaphysics of it The state that faith is knowledge independent of existence So that implies that the initial choice that we've made metaphysically is that existence doesn't exist That existence is in constant flux, that we can't know anything about it Or that we can know independent of our relationship to existence We can just know without seeing without perceiving Without measuring, we can just have knowledge like that without any means of actually obtaining it It just comes to us So like I said though, that initial conflict To disagree with it or to try and disprove it is to contradict in itself You can't prove that existence doesn't exist from a position of non-existence Or that consciousness doesn't exist from a position of unconsciousness It's like the inherent ability and from a quote from Anthony's blog It's like trying to argue against the inherent ability to argue It's a contradiction in itself And that's what it comes down to There's no really two ways about it If you try and prove otherwise, then the burden of proof is on you But you can't do so unless you choose that platform from which to prove it from Cool Right, yeah So conflict epistemologically then is always reason versus faith And how you obtain your knowledge Do you obtain your knowledge by means of perceiving existence and learning about the true nature, the facts of reality Or do you just assume that knowledge is just going to come to you independent of what you do Or by your wishes, whims, feelings, etc. Now, moving on then to potentially some touchy subjects, but we'll see Predominantly in today's world, the philosophical conflicts most people would deal with are not going to be metaphysics or epistemological But like I said, they form the process of determining logically what choices we should make in latter conflicts And those latter conflicts usually end up being ethical or political Or they're certainly the ones that people are consciously aware of So, we'll discuss ethics then and we'll kind of move on to the conflicts that predominantly perfuse today's society So, first of all, when we're talking about ethics, we're talking about morality And we first need to identify what morality is And also what ethics is Because the two are intertwined And the morality, as it states, is a code of values to guide man's choices and actions Now, if we think about it logically, that implies that we've made a certain set of choices metaphysically and epistemologically first Which we'll then move into as well They necessarily dictate the choices we'll make ethically and then politically as well And ethics is essentially the process of learning what those values are And trying to set that code of values, what our morality is and what we hold is valuable to our own lives So you might think that primarily ethics deals with asking the question what values are You know, what should those values be? But before that, that presupposes that there's an answer to the question of value to whom and why And like I said, that draws on the earlier conflicts of existence versus non-existence and reason versus faith So first then, why? Why does man need a code of values? Why does he need a moral compass to guide his life? To know what's good, what's evil? Is that arbitrary? Or is it based in reality? If we accept that we've chosen reality as an absolute and existence exists We can hopefully try and determine what a rational code of ethics is So in the realm of ethics, we've got something called meta-ethics And it's kind of like metaphysics, but it deals with the nature of where ethics come from Where our code of morals come from, where our code of values come from And the ethics we choose Now, historically and predominantly, most people would consider that ethics came from either God Some omniscient, omnipotent being that could just dictate what we should do and what we shouldn't do Or from society So-called normative ethics The collective ethics The ethics which society thinks you should do The values which society determines you should have Not the values which you choose yourself Now, I don't necessarily want to kind of like focus on the specific mysticism involved And faith involved with religion I don't want to touch on any touchy areas like religion If you want to come talk to me after about it, then that's fine But I'm not going to stand here and talk about it now But I will point out the arbitrariness of the construct society If society is necessarily the source of ethics and therefore the source of values That which is good is determined by what society wants to be good Or thinks is good Or votes is good What the majority think is good But the problem is society is only a collection of individuals There's no collective mind There's no collective person There's no collective man There's only you, me, him, her, whatever There's no collective mind There's only individual minds There's only individual men The problem with society as a source of ethics Is that the majority are generally entitled to determine what is good And it's moral for them to determine what is good Regardless of its content And the minority are usually obliged to follow And that's considered moral That's considered valuable Regardless of the content Regardless of what the values chosen are Regardless of whether it conflicts with your existence So if we want to change the predominant kind of pattern of thought It's these issues that we need to tackle But we need to base them in existence We need to base them in metaphysics and epistemology So we should start with a question What are values? Why does man need them? So what are values then? Another quote, I like quotes Value is that which one acts to gain and or keep The concept value is not a primary It presupposes an answer to the question of value to whom And for what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal In the face of an alternative Where no alternative exists No goals and no values are possible So I'm going to start with a question Why should man even need values? Can everyone kind of read that? It's a bit small I'll read it out anyway There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe And this is kind of coming back to the idea of the indestructible robot So I'm round always used a good quote That an indestructible killer robot Not necessarily killer But an indestructible robot is Never has to face the choice of whether it's going to live or die It's indestructible So therefore it can't hold any values Why should man even need values? Can everyone kind of read that? That's the idea of the indestructible robot Existence or non-existence And it pertains to a single class of entities To living organisms The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional The existence of life is not It depends upon a specific course of action Matter is indestructible It changes forms but it cannot cease to exist It is only a living organism That faces a constant alternative The issue of life or death Life is a process of self-sustaining And self-generating action If an organism fails in that action It dies Its chemical elements remain But its life goes out of existence It is only the concept of life That makes the concept of value possible It is only to a living entity That things can be good or evil The indestructible robot can't die You guys can And that's the reason why Man needs values Because man's values Only come from the fact that you're alive That is your highest value It's the source of all your values Your life Man's life Man's life is the ultimate standard of value It's the goalpost The measuring post by which you judge All other values Because it makes all others possible Man's life or man Is an end in itself In himself Now if we kind of Think epistemologically About ethics Then we can consider how we come to those concepts Initially Knowledge always starts perceptually And for man That might be pleasure or pain Suffering or happiness So perceptually Whatever actions we take May either be happy May create happiness, sadness Whatever We know whether something's good or evil Or we perceive whether something's good or evil Brownedly for our senses by those means But As we've seen That's never an automatic process It has to be based in reality We can't just accept that our perceptions Are necessarily correct either Like we said We need to use a method of reason A method of measurement And we need to know Whether or not they're right So If man's life is the Highest value he can hold Then he has to figure out a way of maintaining that life He has to answer questions such as How do I get food? How do I get shelter? How do I survive? On the most basic level I know that doesn't necessarily apply in today's society Some of those things are kind of They just kind of are there But you still have to act upon them So the principles are the same Now The problem is Does he choose reason or faith To try and achieve those goals? Does he choose to accept that existence exists And he can learn about it And learn how to manipulate it And learn how to act upon it To get the goals To achieve the goals he wants And to achieve the sustainment of his life And therefore of all his other values Or does he choose faith? Does he just hope that Things will happen somehow? Now I've got a quote Which is kind of usually used As a bit of a dig at religion But it kind of Appropriately highlights this I think So Forget the word religion Just put mysticism or faith Whatever you want to put in there Now I'm going to read this out to you Because I kind of Read along a little bit The man who gets given a fish Never learns where that fish comes from How he can obtain it He never gains any knowledge Past the extent of A man gave me a fish And so we'll be left with the answer With the answer to the question of Where or how do I get more fish As Somewhere Somehow This man is living his life Through the means of another Waiting for more fish He will die when no one attempts To give him more fish The man who accepts mysticism Mysticism Religion's mystic but Too touchy The man who accepts mysticism Does not attempt to Does attempt to gain more fish Sorry But he chooses to ignore The facts of reality And instead presumes to ask Something Or someone Whom he can never know Exists To provide him with fish He will die when the consequences Of reality catch up with him And he finds that fish Don't reign from the sky Or appear in his hands Because he wants it to Or wishes it to Or prays to someone To give it to him Prays to God Or society or whatever The man who learns to fish however Whether he's taught Or he seeks that knowledge himself Is irrelevant He gains knowledge He learns about the fundamental nature Of reality He learns where to catch fish He learns where to How to catch fish And where to catch them He learns that by using his knowledge And applying the facts of reality He can provide himself with food And importantly Actively be productive in sustaining His life And therefore sustaining all the Values that stem from his life So if life is a standard And if knowledge is power And if reason is man's only means Of obtaining knowledge And therefore of survival That which is proper to a rational Reasonable human being Is what's good And that which goes against that Is what's evil Fundamentally The man has to Has a choice He has to choose whether to use Reason or faith Or whether to accept existence Or non-existence These fundamentals The problem is Some men don't choose to do that And it's pretty prevalent In society nowadays Now I and Rand had a good Sort of two words she used To denote these men She called them the moochers And the looters The survival of the moochers and looters Is dependent on reason But only indirectly They use force Or act as parasites To steal the knowledge of other men To force other men to think for them To provide for them To sustain their lives They never live through their own lives They always live through the means Of other men So even their survival Is indirectly necessitated by reason They try and live independently of it But they can't It's impossible You can't deny existence And then try and live in reality The problem is though They try and live on a whim They try and live on this Faith-based reality That somehow somewhere Someone will provide for them Someone will sustain their life The problem is the range of their survival Is always dictated by the range of their victims The more and more they suck The more and more they steal The more and more they take from other people Without any value in return Eventually those victims die And as soon as reason stops They die too They always live on the range of a moment They never project They never view their own goals And view the means of how to obtain them In reality themselves By gaining knowledge about it And learning how to achieve those goals I was going to use a kind of quote for Or paraphrase what Matt Hussie said in that video You put on the convention The moochers and looters They're the destroyers The men of reason You guys hopefully You're the creators You create your own lives You create the means of sustaining your own lives Fuck yeah The destroyers choose death You guys choose life The men of reason choose life And how to sustain it They choose life And they choose its corresponding values The values which make life possible And which stem from life Reason Purpose And self-esteem If man desires to live He has to be purposely productive He has to purposely sustain his own life Achieve his own goals So productiveness is his central purpose His purpose is to sustain his own life Reason is the means of doing that Learning about the nature of reality And how to manipulate How to dictate it How to apply it And how to achieve your goals And pride is the result Feeling good about yourself Feeling good that you achieved your goals Feeling good that you lived your own life Feeling good that you achieved values That you necessitate as value Now these values have corresponding virtues as well For reason, rationality is the virtue of reason It's the recognition that reason is man's only source of knowledge And it's the application of that consistently Purpose Productiveness is the recognition that productive work Is the process by which man sustains his life Whether great or modest It is any rational pursuit Any pursuit that is dependent upon your knowledge of existence Your reason And self-esteem Pride Pride is the recognition that man's life is worth sustaining It's moral ambition Never accepting irrational values Never practicing irrational virtues Never failing to hold rational values And practicing their virtues Never accepting unearned guilt if one doesn't And if one does earn it, never leaving it uncorrected Never resigning passively to one's flaws of character Never placing any concern over one's own self-esteem One's own life And most importantly, never accepting the role of a slave or sacrificial animal Like the moochers and looters would want you to Live for your own life, don't live for theirs Psychologically though We don't tend to face those problems We don't face life and death all the time Unless you're like Anthony and you walk in front of cars Instead, man faces the problem of happiness or suffering And I always like this quote Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death See the moochers, they achieve life Or sorry, they avoid death rather To a degree Until their victims die Until the men of reason decide to run away Go on strike John Gault But let me kind of clarify that Man's happiness is his own proper, is the proper state Of his existence You know that you're living your life correctly If you're happy, like Anthony said You don't have to necessarily express that Unless you think it's valuable to express that to other people And you express it in the presence of people Who are worthy of that happiness I'm really happy to be here with you guys I'm really happy to be here presenting at the convention I may not necessarily be jumping around doing dances And backflips and smiling and whatnot So to create happiness is to create a life that's worth That you deem is worth living It's to stand there doing what you do Doing what's productive to you And to say, this is worth living for This is why I'm living, this is what I enjoy This is what makes me happy, this is what sustains my life This is valuable to me And this is what is worth living for So When you consider the fact that Logically Existence exists Reason is our means of perceiving it And happiness is man's proper goal in life We have to consider that the only sort of Rational code of morality Is our own long-term rational self-interest We have to project, view our goals Know what's going to make us happy What's going to help us succeed How we can achieve the goals And how we can live our own life And achieve our own happiness So long-term rational self-interest Projecting, viewing goals That sort of thing is what's important And I was going to make a clarification So one of the things That some philosophers use As an counter-argument to this idea Of self-interest or selfishness Because it's got such a dogma Associated with the word Some people view hedonism As being selfish Hedonism is living for the purpose Of pleasure, living for the purpose Of happiness, but only on the range Of a moment Anything that produces acute happiness Happiness on a short scale Is good and anything that doesn't is bad The problem is it doesn't consider The long-term impact of things Drawing a kind of example Nutritionally because it's quite easy to do Some things taste good and they feel good And they make you feel happy when you eat them But you might know that they're Shit for your health So should that necessarily dictate Whether or not you choose to eat those things Whether or not you choose that as a goal Your life as a goal Being hedonistic and just Gorgeous on pizza and shit You might enjoy it But it's going to catch up with you And eventually you're going to be unhappy It's failing to see your long-term happiness And the long-term success in your life And it applies to anything But that's just an example That I could think of at the time So it's avoiding living On the range of the moment It's considering, it's projecting Seeing where you're going Having a vision of the future Like Anthony mentioned for the conference You guys should have a vision Of your own future You should have an ideal That you can project And try and create in reality By accepting the nature of reality And learning about it And applying it I thought it was quite appropriate In dealing with ethics And it being a bit of a pickup convention No, no, no I didn't mean to say that That a lot of you guys are probably here For the kind of like pickup And relationships And that sort of thing And obviously a lot of the speakers I thought ethically It would be It would be inappropriate To avoid the issue of love And what love really is As a concept So ethically What of love Lovely picture there Fundamentally, to love Is to value Now I got into a bit of a debate Over whether or not love is an emotion Or whether or not love is a Concept that we've created To denote our value of something And I think it's a latter And I think if you guys are familiar With any of Nathaniel Brandon's works As far as I'm aware He kind of has the same sort of line of thought Love is to value And I think that's actually his own quote Yeah, yeah So Only a man With an unyielding, uncompromised standard of value Could even begin to consider love If the love is to value You have to have that measuring post By which you deem what is valuable And if that's your own life And you've got the self-esteem To be able to say that your own life Is that standard of value Then you've got the means By which to judge Whether or not something is valuable To yourself Whether or not you truly love it If a man does not value himself How can he value anything else? Love is a judgment of value It's to say in your mind That what you love is valuable to you And your life and your happiness To love without condition Is to not love at all By loving everyone equally Without any judgment of the value To your life they represent You effectively love no one It makes love It inflates love as a concept It makes it Unvaluable How am I doing for time? Okay, should be good I feel like this is going on for ages Okay, so I think you had a very important topic Yeah Well Okay, so moving on from love Talking about relationships Necessarily we have to move on To the idea of rights And what are rights? Socially, that's how man Recognizes morality In other men If man's life is an end in itself He has to recognize that fact in every man Because every man is a man Every man is an existent And every man necessarily has the same Code of values Or should have the same code of values In the same moral value measuring post So to attempt to Not recognize that Or to not recognize that in another man Is to contradict that it exists in yourself And that's your standard of value So like I say Rights are the means of recognizing The unavoidable fact In man's dealings with each other Excuse me So The primary conflict then When it comes to ethics And what determines rights And what determines how you should Live your life and make your choices Ethically and what is moral What is valuable Is your own rational self-interest Whether you live for the sake of your own life Whether you live for your own goals And your own happiness Or whether you live for the sake of others Which is altruism Now Just to clarify Usually people use the Look at the conflict of egoism Versus altruism And I was actually talking to Someone I can't remember who About I think it was Actually he's not here About this idea of Nietzschean Egoism And I like to Kind of keep that separate And I'll go into the reasons Why in just a moment Just because Egoism from Nietzsche's point of view Is irrational And I'll explain why in just a moment So the conflict from rational self-interest From rational self-interest to altruism Is Ask the question Is man a rational animal Does man have a right to his own life And his own interests Or is he obligated to live For the sake of others As a slave to any dictator Any omnipotent being That some arbitrary construct Or to society itself To the majority of others To the mob rule of Democracy Ethics should be distinct from Democracy It doesn't have a rightful place in there Because That holds that whatever the majority says is good Is moral And whatever the minority say Good question Yep I think there is a proper purpose for it in But it definitely doesn't relate to Any form of ethical system So things that aren't optional Things that are optional It's useful for things that aren't optional And the nature of man's Code of values unfortunately Certainly from my perspective And from hopefully the way I've presented it to you guys today It's not a matter of choice It is a necessity of reality And when it comes to government And I'll briefly go into politics Or I don't want to kind of dwell on it too much In this talk It should only Pertain to things that are purely optional Things that don't have an impact on Directly on whether or not Man can achieve his own life His own liberty and his own happiness So and in fact I was going to suggest that Any of you guys haven't read it You should read Anthony's blog post Liberty Unlocked Declarationism I was going to go on to suggesting that anyway Because he does a great job of Kind of debunking the whole bullshit That is government that exists nowadays Is that good? Yeah, yeah, I was getting that Yeah, cool Okay Okay, yeah, so Like I said I wanted to clarify Nietzsche and self-interest or egoism To Rand's concept of egoism Selfishness is quite literally Concerned with your own interests And one of the reasons that I'm around Uses that is because she likes to be quite Controversial and she liked the fact That the stigma that was attached to it Did stir this kind of like Response in people And the proponents of altruism People who say that you are your brother's Keeper that you should live for others Have tried to sort of like demonise the term And created this imagery of a brute Who goes around metaphorically Or even not metaphorically with a club To basically just take what he wants Irrespective of his recognition Of anyone else's rights To their own life and liberty and happiness And essentially that's Nietzsche's Form of egoism He suggests that anything that's Good for yourself is good Just because you deem it good for yourself Regardless of whether or not You can accept that fact in another person It comes back to this Idea of rights Nietzsche recognises that Life is your own standard of living And anything that is good to you Is good rather than evil Regardless of the means of getting there He ignores the means of getting there And he ignores the means of the fact That it's a contradiction If he fails to recognise the fact That my life is my own Your life is your own, your life is your own He fails to recognise the fact that That is evident in every man So I try to avoid using the word egoism Just because some people relate that To Nietzsche's concept of it This idea of a guy going around with a gun Or a club and just taking whatever he wants And that being good Also I wanted to clarify that some people see Benevolence and self-interest As independent from each other You know, a lot of the The altruists and the people who follow Those sorts of doctrines and the government officials And leaders and stuff Who tell you these sorts of things Kind of try and make it clear that The business leaders and whatnot They're only out for themselves And that's all they do They can't do anything good for each other For another person But they've got no Apple or whatever Or Microsoft or whatever Everything they do, they're doing it for themselves But there's an act of benevolence there as well When making a product available Providing value to other people as well So one thing to understand is that Self-interest is not independent of benevolence You know By standing here today I'm doing a kind of act of benevolence By providing you guys hopefully With some interesting information and something useful But I did it out of purely self-interest It's not a contradiction You know, it's in my interest to see Young men like you educated on these sorts of topics And these sorts of principles Because you guys and myself and people here You know, we're the next generation We're the guys who are going to shape the world So we're going to dictate, you know The patterns of culture and what people accept as right And what people accept as wrong What people accept as good and evil And what choices they make in their lives And how they fundamentally perceive reality And make choices So selfishness and benevolence Are not mutually exclusive But interestingly I think Outerism and benevolence are mutually exclusive You know Just try and live consistently Outeristically Serve everyone else other than yourself Because if you manage to do it Then You've achieved the impossible Because The proponents of altruism say that You should only That your happiness is dictated by the happiness You provide to others And it's still selfish if you do something for others And get a sense of happiness out of it It's an impossible doctrine to hold up to You can't be consistently altruistic Because even if you do something for someone else You have to take no pleasure, no happiness Nothing out of it for you to be Consistently altruistic It's impossible I'd love to see anyone try and do it All they'll achieve is death Anyway, right, moving on from ethics Hopefully the last topic is politics Now I'm going to try And kind of breeze over this just because Like I said You'll get a lot more information Than I can provide in the next 10 minutes Or so And I'm going to go through The audience's blog essay On declarationism So we've got a nice picture Of what I think I don't know if that's an accurate picture Or not, there were several on there That's declaration of independence It looks like the end Yeah, sorry But anyway Right, so that's what the picture is And necessarily Any political system has to be logically dictated The ethics which underpins it So what Ein Rahn proposed Was that the only political system That's consistently ethical Was laissez-faire capitalism That government only existed To secure the rights of man Now without going into Any kind of like economical theories Whether it's capitalism Versus, you know, government stimulus Or anything like that Personally I couldn't give a shit Whether or not one particular economic system And intervention and economy Was more beneficial to the economy And more beneficial to everyone Than the other The problem I've got is whether or not It's ethical, whether it's moral or not For government to do anything other Than just protect our rights To hold the monopoly on force And remove force from man's relationships With each other So that we can just deal with each other As traders, as individuals So And summarize it If physical force is to be barred from social Relationships, men need an institution Charged with the task of protecting their rights Under an objective code of rules This is the task of government Of a proper government It's basic task, it's only moral justification And the reason why men do need a government A government is the means of placing The retaliatory use of physical force Under objective control, i.e. Under objectively defined laws Now I used to, when I first got into Objectivism, I used to think that Anarchy There wasn't necessarily a role for government I was a bit maybe naive Thinking that every man Is going to be completely rational And hold a completely rational set of morals And we'd all be able to live in this Wonderful, perfect world Where everyone adhered to all of that But unfortunately that doesn't happen So this is the reason why man Necessarily needs government Because man has to choose to be rational Man has to choose existence, has to choose All these absolutes, and some men don't choose it They're the moochers and looters And the only reason government should exist Is to protect our rights, protect our life From those people So, the main political Conflict then is capitalism Or individualism, or whatever word you want to use To kind of say it, versus collectivism Or socialism, or whatever word you want to use again I thought this picture was just quite funny But You've got socialism or collectivism That's basically where You live for your own life And you gain all your goals And you achieve all your values And then someone comes along And gets government or themselves with a gun To say, actually no, we need that So we're going to take it from you So that's a bit odd Considering what Code of morals we've just dictated Capitalism on the other hand Means that you can achieve all your values And they belong to you And this represents you as an individual And you can protect your property In your own life Or whether this is metaphorically representing government Protecting the moochers from stealing Your values Is irrelevant But that's basically the general gist of the two conflicts It's either you get to live for your own life And gain your own values Or you have to do it for someone else Either by force Or fraud or whatever So We end on these simple choices then Existence versus non-existence Reason versus faith Self-interest versus altruism Capitalism versus collectivism And hopefully I've shown that Logically we can answer these Later questions by understanding the basis Of these former fundamental conflicts And I think that's it Any questions? So basically what Neil was asking is At what point Should government play a role In regulating In regulating What is man's relationships With each other Talking on the level of sort of like Businesses and corporate things But it's irrelevant whether or not It's a business or whether or not It's two individual men dealing with each other I think the problem is as soon as we start To get government to regulate things We're removing the personal responsibility If for example I'm a customer There's a responsibility On both ends of the trade involved There's a responsibility of me Of not being a naive dumbass And finding out exactly what it is That I'm giving my money for And there's a responsibility on the client To provide me with the correct information About the product and not try and defraud me And give me something that I think I'm paying for And yet I've received something different Now this is one of the reasons Why government should have a court system To deal with these types of things Because the court is no different Than any kind of force It's just semantics really In sort of like practice it's different But the end result is the same And I think that As long as government Starts interfering those sorts of things It removes personal responsibility And personal choice Some people may learn That something in a product is bad for them But it still should be their choice Whether or not they Are still being valuable to them For example I'm under no sort of impression That alcohol is good for me It's good for my health But I enjoyed it and I think the Choice should be my own to buy that I was just showing Anthony In the metro this morning There's been some calls to legalise All forms of drugs I think that's What should happen The personal choice should be made By the person who is making It should be individual This I don't think is By any means a role for Government To perform those sorts of actions It has to have money Or something from somewhere else If it's not generating Yes, absolutely If the person who's Abusing drugs or whatever Initiates physical force Into a relationship with whoever That would be deemed Evil, legal and government should step in But in terms of helping That person to Get away from their drug dependence That has to be on various levels It has to be their own personal choice It has to be And then outside of that It should be the benevolence of Whoever they're personally related with Either their family or friends It has to be their choice as well It would be no different than There was a brilliant Video and I can't remember What the name of the video I'll try and remember it But basically it was the extent of Similar sorts of scenario So and so's neighbour couldn't afford To go to college or whatever So Two friends One of them decided to be benevolent Because he thought it was valuable to help The other friend didn't want to And the friend that gave him money Decided to go and get a group of people To sign some forms and have a vote To see whether or not the other person Had to give him money or not It's the same role with government It's basically instead of One person forcing another person It's just getting another organisation To take money or force that person To perform an action which they may not Necessarily want to do themselves And I think those sorts of relationships Will be brought down to a more Person involved and the person People around them, their personal choices Rather than being forced to do something By government or any other kind of organisation Or individuals Does that answer your question? Anything else? Anyone can come speak to me afterwards