 I find that there's so many among objectivists who get very discouraged and very depressed so easily and I think it relates to the point you just made of the world as it is and what we can do about it. And so, and I do think there's a there's I don't know how accurate this concept is but I like the idea of being a rationally optimistic. And even though what we really hope that is is is is realistic but but but but I think with a positive perspective on the world because I think there's a lot in the world that is positive. I'm curious what you think about that, and how you keep a people ask me this all the time so I'm going to ask you how you keep kind of a positive frame of mind given. I think we agree in politics would be on a lot of things that things are really bad. I mean in culturally that there's a lot of bad things going on and the really problems that while we were certainly not in the dark ages was we're still fighting to prevent that from happening one day because we don't know what's going to happen. How do you keep that positive perspective. Given the world in which we live and given the ideas that we hold. Let me say, I've always tended to be more on the positive side, and I'll say why I have been but I just want to say first as contact through this. I think that America is in way worse shape than I thought it was three years ago. I think I was thought it was better than it was three years ago, and I think events since have shown me that it. There were more cracks than I thought there were then they were bigger than I thought they were then and they've gotten a lot worse since and I think the country is in a really really bad way right now. So I don't want anything I say positive to be, you know, oh everything's cool. And I also think it's more important to think about how to maintain a positive and life oriented perspective in light of revelations that things might be worse than you thought and that those revelations have shook me and they've made me think about how I want to prioritize what I do differently and what you know I haven't reached any particular decisions about them but as I think about do I want to write this paper and what's the point of it or that paper or do this podcast or whatever. These things have been in my mind that I don't yet have a, you know, fully worked out answer to those questions. You know one's always adjusting one's goals. But this has been a hard period for me. But that said, you're not the project of life isn't a project of coming into a world that's a prepared environment for you. And, you know, we should try to make prepared environment for our kids but coming into a world that's a prepared environment for you and playing a preset role that's meant to bring you happiness. And if you have that view you're never going to be happy. And you're always going to be frustrated by the world you're in that that's just not the nature of nature and the nature of human being. And the nature of what a human being is and what the world is like is that you have to figure out given the world you're in and given your abilities. What kind of a life you can make for yourself and find a way to make it and if you accept that as the problem to be solved in a human life. Then a lot of things that seem like their unfairness is and they might actually be unfair in some cases a lot of them are a lot of things that seem like unfairness is or set back. You acknowledge them as such then you just take them as part of the context in which you have to do the job of living. Whereas if you expect to be handed a world in which it's easy to have a good life. Again you're always going to be dissatisfied and then you take that whole perspective I think is important. And then when you take that perspective I mean look at the world. There is so much we could do and so much possible to us. And when would you have rather have been born. I mean in some utopia that doesn't yet exist that it's your job to help try to create a well then go sit trying to create it or in some past period and any past period that you might romanticize and might rightly romanticize because it had a lot of really good things about it. Also has a lot of really bad things about it I mean it's only in the 20s that women got the vote. If you're a woman I mean living before then is really awful. And if you're a man it's awful too because who wants to you know if you're a heterosexual but either way who wants to be in a world where half the people you deal with are disenfranchised you're seen as second class citizens you're who are you going to marry. People couldn't be educated and think about you know if you watch television shows about the 50s and not to mention you know black people are people of other races and and this is not just bad for them right it's bad for you as a allegedly privileged white man. I mean who are you going to be friends with who are you going to benefit from so who are you going to train who are you going to relate to. So, just the obvious changes that the leftists would kind of focus on right in the last half century have been these race and sex one, not that everything's gotten good with those things it hasn't but certain evils have been eliminated. And those are real things you have to think about if you think about I'd rather live in the 50s when everything was better supposedly, which it wasn't something for better and somewhere where. And likewise all the technology you'd be giving up I mean how much easier it is. If the if you think the culture is worse as a whole, which it's not totally clear to me is but parts of it certainly are how much easier it is now to find the niches in it of people who you're interested in how much more entertainment than the actual content there is, even if that you can find because you can do web searches on it and good have podcast conversation. There's a lot good now. It's not clear that there's a time when things were in there's no time when things were in every way better. And in every time when they were in some ways better they were in some ways work. And if you're someone who has real values, right, things that you care about and are making your life about. Things that you've become attached to and care about and are making your life about in this world. And so you can't want some other world that's nothing like it. Or that's like it only in some abstract way. I think Harry been finger somebody told the story about I ran being asked you know if some aliens came and could take her away to some totally rational future or other planet or something would she do it. There were totally capitalists there and so forth, and her answer was what she'd have to give up all the things that she loved here. And that would be my answer to I don't know if she really said that I only vaguely remember the anecdote. But you know I have a wife here and a job here and friends here and things I like that I've made in this world, and they have a kind of coherence to them and a trajectory that I think is making the world better, and making my life better. And that's what I value, not the life I would have in some utopia that I'm always, you know, complaining that this life isn't it. Yeah, and I think it's it's it's the living your life focused on those things focused on the things that you're building it's it's it's, I think it boils down to having, having a life of meaning having a life of purpose and and I think that that when people don't when they when they don't when they haven't built themselves a life that means something to them then all they do is yearn for some utopia, and a constantly frustrated and angry and disappointed in the world in which they live then they're not being selfish, they're not being self interested in the in the full sense of what that means. I think that's right and utopian longings and kind of ideals that are disconnected from anything you can do to actually reach them that you could expect to succeed at or at least make real progress at and enjoy that progress. And the idea like that is not really a value and not really an ideal it's a kind of rationalization or excuse for not making your life better.