 All right, so you often hear the question, and it's a question that's very prevalent in the culture, and it's a question that comes up a lot, and particularly among non-religious people, all from religious people to non-religious people. And that question is, why be more? Why be good? What's the point? What's, you know, you don't believe in God, you don't believe there's some authority watching over you and judging you, you don't believe in an afterlife. So why be more? Why adhere to principles, to guidelines, to pursue particular values and act on particular virtues? What's the purpose, right? And for most people, if they're asked that question, they kind of shrug, they don't really know. Well, this is how it was raised, this is how it was brought up, or, you know, this is what God says, or this is what the dogma is, or this is what I'm supposed to do. But why? And indeed, the culture and the world around us has a very, very narrow view of morality. So morality, according to the culture, according to our religions, according to many of our philosophers, it applies only to one realm in human life. And that is our interaction with other people. So what does morality mean? It means be selfless, at least somewhat, not too much, a little bit. Be kind and friendly and good and once in a while sacrifice for other people. Make sure other people are okay, help the poor, help others. That is to most people, and that's the culture and that's to the world, what morality is. And then there is a real valid validity to the question, well, why be moral? What should I mean, I said to other people? Why should I sacrifice? Why should I be selfless? Why should I place the well-being of other people above my own? And there is no answer to that. And that's why the question of why be moral and the idea that, I don't know, atheists can't be moral or atheists can't be moral, but there's no real reason for them to be moral is so prevalent. Because there's a sense in which the conventional view of morality, the view of morality as sacrifice for others, care about the well-being as others more than you care about your own well-being or equally or the same level. Why? And this is really where objectivism and in certain other moral views, but not many, but certainly objectivism is truly unique and truly revolutionary. Morality, of course, is not about others primarily. There's one virtue out of seven that has to do with other people and that's the virtue of justice. The other virtues have to do with you. And if you think about what morality is, morality is a guide to living. Why should I be moral? Because I wanna live. It's a guide to living a particular kind of life, a successful life, a prosperous life, a life of value, a life of flourishing, a life suitable to a human being, to a being of cognition, a being of reason, to the rational animal. So why be moral? Because I wanna live a good life because I wanna be happy because I wanna make the most of my life. The objectivist ethics is a guide, book, a map to how to live a good life, how to be successful, how to be happy. And indeed, that's what morality should be. You know, I've often said that if you wanna argue about this particular virtue or that particular virtue that Ayn Rand presents, that's great. If we can accept the idea that morality's purpose is to guide human beings towards happiness, towards success, first of all, to survive, but to survive as the rational animal, as a human being, with everything that that implies, then why should I be moral? Because I wanna live that kind of life. I mean, it seems pretty awful not to be moral. Why would anybody want to live, to not live that kind of life? So the reason to be moral is if you will because it's practical. If by practical you mean that it is life enhancing, it's pro-life, it supports life, it supports the life of a rational being. And why does it do that? What is the magic sauce? What is the magic sauce? Magic, I put in quotes, of course, that produces this result that morality leads to happiness, that morality is practical and that what is practical is moral. Practical assuming that you mean by practical, lead to happiness, lead to long-term well-being. Well, the magic sauce is how the morality is derived and how the morality, if you will, is conceived and how the morality is applied. So the objective is morality, I mean, Rand's view of ethics is not dogmatic. It's not deductive. It's indeed inductive. It starts with the idea that the purpose is to live. The purpose is to live successfully, to live well, to live consistent as a rational being. And of course, she presents kind of the inductive case for why we are a rational being, why reason is our means of survival, our basic means of survival, as Elena Pigov does in OPA. That is if we want to survive, we have to use reason. And why, why is that? Where does she get that from? How do you know that you have to use reason in order to survive? You look, you observe, you study history, you look at how people live, you look at what successful quiet is. You look at the products that are necessary for human existence, whether it's hunting, agriculture, electricity, computers, and you ask yourself, where do all these come from? What do all these necessitate? How did human beings create this? And no other species comes close. What is it that makes it possible for human beings to hunt in spite of the fact that we're weak, pathetic creatures with no fangs or claws were slow. How do we hunt? We use our mind. We build weapons. We build traps. We develop hunting strategies. We work in teams. We communicate with one another. We use our senses to perceive the world, but we can conceptualize. We can integrate those sense perceptions. We can integrate those percepts into abstractions. And we can use those abstractions to better inform our lives. And to shape ultimately the world in which we live. So everywhere you look, if you're looking for it, you can see the role of reason in man's life. You can see the importance of reason. You can see that man survives at the very, very fundamental biological level. He survives by using reason. There's no food without reason, given the kind of being we are. Not every animal needs reason in order to survive. Human beings need reason in order to survive. So reason being the primary value in, sorry, the primary value in the objectivist ethics. It's not dogma. It's not, oh, reason is important. It's not revelatory. It's induced from observing human success over hundreds of thousands of years. It's induced by looking at the industrial evolution and seeing the role of reason in mass production. The role of reason in raising a standard of living. The role of reason in wealth creation. The role of reason in healthcare and the extension of life expectancy. So the reason if you think, so go by reason, reason is our primary value is at the core of our man's ethics. Is that practical? Well, yeah, it's practical because that's how we got it. We didn't get it from a revelation. We didn't get it from dogma. Now we have to test it. We got it from observing facts in reality. We got it by inducing what works in reality. And now we can say, okay, what is reason implying? Well, we have an act of mind, we're rational. That's our number one virtue is rationality. But what does rationality require? Well, it requires commitment to facts. Well, that's honesty. Now, you could say that that's deduced from the idea of rationality, but it's also induced from observing the way people behave. The kind of trouble they get when they lie. The kind of trouble they get in particular if they lie to themselves, undermine their own capacity to think, undermine their own capacity to reason, and therefore suffer the consequence of their lives. So the virtues, every one of them, independence, well, nobody else can think. Your brain, your mind is yours. Nobody else can think for you. There is nobody else. Nobody else can eat for you. So yes, you can, in a sense, deduce from the idea of rationality is your primary virtue. The need to be independent. But again, you also see it in the world out there. You find it in what is successful. Who are the successful people out there? Who are the people who live good lives? They're people who are independent thinkers. They're independent actors. They're people who engage with the world using their own mind, their own values, their own standards. Not subjective, matched by reality, you know, guided by reality, but independent. So it's the practicality of Rand's morality is baked in. It's because of where the morality comes from. See, Christian morality is not practical. And it wasn't derived from human experience. It wasn't derived from what works or doesn't work to achieve a goal. What goal? What's the goal of Christian morality? God, Jesus, sacrifice. So if that's your goal, then yes, it matches, but practical means success. And Christian morality, there is no standard of success. After life, that's not a standard of success. You're just supposed to do it because you're supposed to do it. It's dogma, happiness in the afterlife. No measure of that. We can't measure it, we can't know it exists. There's nobody coming back and saying, yeah, this work, that didn't work. The beauty of happiness in this life is it's testable. We can live it, we can experience it, we can correct path. We can try things and whoops, that didn't work. Try again, try something else. So Rand's morality sets out. Morality sets out with a goal to be practical. And because it's based on reason and rationality, the measure of that practicality is reality. The place we look for it, the place we go to in order to figure out what's gonna work and what's not gonna work is reality. So if I ask you, is this business plan likely to work or not in business? Well, based on your experience and kind of the business principles you have to write from success or failure from businesses, you look at the business plan, you compare it to those kind of principles and you go based on my experience and based on my knowledge, this business plan is practical because it follows the principles that lead to success in business that people have tried. Or you might say, it's not. Or you might say, this is new and interesting. I haven't seen this before. I don't know. It'll be interesting if you try it. We'll learn a lot from trying it. So once you have that goal, now it's a question of, once you have that goal of, in the case of morality, success at living, you've got principles that are time tested and that are consistent with your other values. For example, if reason is the prime value because you've identified it as the core for human existence, for human survival, then all the other values and virtues have to integrate with that. It can't be that you have things that are contradictory. Where's the practicality? Where's the success? Where's the survival in that? Oops, I've fallen behind him. So the moral is the practical because that's what morality sets out to be. A proper morality. A proper morality is a guide to living. And again, the details we might disagree on, we might disagree on application, we might disagree on specifics. But if the goal is what is, now we know what the purpose is and the purpose is to be practical. And the practical is the moral. Partially how we learn what moral is, is by looking at what is worked, i.e. by looking at what was practical, in a sense that it worked. And then deriving a principle from the things that worked. All right, hopefully that's helpful. You'll let me know, I guess. Let's look and see at the topics. Can you discuss what benevolence we're gonna do later? I'm gonna do that later. I'm gonna do that later. All right, Liam says for 50 bucks. Liam says, the most practical concept Irand taught me was to go to the facts first, not the argument. What facts support your view and can you integrate those ideas? She's the only philosopher I know that advocating looking at reality, not other people. I think somebody like Aristotle was focused on looking at reality, not at other people, right? But yes, I think that's absolutely what Irand teaches you. So the question is, why do we need morality? We need morality because we don't know automatically how to live, how to survive, how to thrive. We need principles to guide us. Where are we gonna get those principles? From reality, from the facts of reality, from what works and what doesn't. What is uniquely human and what makes it possible? And that's points us in the direction of reason, purpose, self-esteem is the primary values because those are things that when we look around, are required in order to just basically survive. And it's suddenly required in order to thrive. You don't see successful people in any productive realm that are not, did not follow reason, did not have self-esteem, did not have a purpose. So those are all tied up together but the way we get to them is by observation, by looking at the facts. So absolutely, Liam, it is all about identifying the relevant facts and then integrating and coming up with principles from the integration of the facts, from the generalization that you come from from that integration. So Zev, let's say, Fred Harper writes, I heard you mentioned you aren't great at gift giving. That is true. Easy mode for gift giving is really long charging cables or practical conveniences like an adjustable one-person table that folds up small. My gift to you is this $50 Merry Christmas. Thank you, Fred Harper. Yeah, I find cash the easiest gift to give. It's very easy. It's very practical. It's very mobile. It's very fungible. It's the perfect gift. It's the perfect gift. All right, John with 80 bucks Australian. What are your thoughts on the book, The Creature of Jekyll Island by Edward Griffin? Thanks, Iran, Merry Christmas. You have changed my life for the good. I appreciate that, John. Thank you. That's my Christmas gift is the recognition. I don't know The Creature of Jekyll Island. I mean, I remember vaguely reading it, certainly a kid's version of it, but I don't remember the story. I don't remember the story, so I apologize, but I just don't have thoughts on it because I'm sure I remember the cover of the kid's version that I read to my kids and I can't remember the actual book, which is frustrating. So I put it aside. If my memory comes back to me, then I will definitely re-engage on that one. Let's see. I, Anthropomophize Altruism, thinking of it as the doting husband who always gets his wife her tea and then it turns out he's been poisoning it. It's a trick. Don't fall for it. Yes. I mean, altruism is a trick. It's a trick to get control over you. It's a trick to, yeah, I mean, it's a trick to undermine you. Altruism, but it's worse than a trick. It is, it's a form of underlying, undermining all life. It's fundamentally at its core, it's anti-life. It says your life doesn't matter. Your life is not worthy of your effort. Your life is not worthy of your thought. Your life is not worthy of your focus. That's what altruism tells you. It is poison because it's destructive to you because it tells you your life is worthless. And it's ultimately destructive to everybody around you because altruists resent the altruism. You can't be human and not resent the fact that you're expected not to care about yourself. You're expected to care about everybody else but not about yourself. I mean, even the mother Teresa was super unhappy frustrated, bitter, resentful, unfriendly, treated people horribly. Why? Because I'm sure what was going on ahead and you could find this in her diary is, why am I doing this? Why are the people out there living a life and I have to sacrifice? And why am I sacrificing for these people? What did I get out of it? And did they appreciate me? They don't appreciate me. So what's the point of all this? Altruists have this to some degree or another so they always come up bitter, resentful, nasty and they poison all the relationships they have around them. So it truly is a vicious, horrific, evil ideology but it's the dominant one. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com. 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