 All right, so let's talk a little bit about Western civilization. What is Western civilization? So first is what is civilization? I mean civilization is a culture, a geographic area, in which significant achievements are made, at least relative to what is going on for the rest of mankind. So a civilization is a place where real achievements are being achieved. In comparison to everything going on around them. So we can talk about a Mesopotamian civilization, ancient civilization, because this is where I think, correct me if my history is wrong, you know, writing and farming and other aspects, other achievements, law, first examples of a legal system we can find in Mesopotamia. Egypt is a civilization because it achieves certain things technologically. We might say it's limiting, that is that the civilization is limited, the achievements are limited, but it is a civilization. Of course Greek civilization is maybe the epitome of an example of this, because it surpasses Egyptian, it surpasses the Mesopotamian, it becomes the leading civilization in that the achievements of the Greeks, whether in art, philosophy, and thinking, and science, and in politics, and almost every realm of human endeavor, exceed anything else that the world has seen. Rome is definitely a civilization, and there's very little competition. There's civilization in China. Again, there are achievements being achieved in China during certain errors. So civilization is the sum of an achievement of a particular people, culture, area, geographic area. And western civilization is the achievements of the people's primarily identified by Western Europe and the United States, although, you know, so Western Europe and some of the areas that were colonized by Western Europe, although, as we'll see, I think what makes western civilization unique is that because it is a civilization that is fundamentally based on ideas, it is not limited by geography, it is not limited to a people, it is not limited to a place, but it is something that can transverse that place, it can go beyond that place, it can go, in a sense, you can have western civilization in any geographic area by any people in any place in the world. It doesn't have to be in the West. It doesn't have to be Europeans. It can be anybody. So what is western civilization? What are these achievements? Well, if we look at the achievements, or, well, first, when does western civilization happen? I mean, there is no western civilization before the Renaissance. There are some centers of learning, there's stuff going on, there's some innovation in business, but there's very little. Life is horrific. There's very little achievement for human beings during the period before the Renaissance in Europe. Indeed, there's much more achievement, science, scientific achievement, literary achievement, philosophical achievement, scientific achievement going on in the East, in the in the Muslim world, in the, you know, certainly from the 900s, 800s, 900s, 900s through the 1200s, particularly if you include Spain in that. So there is no western civilization. What wouldn't consider the West civilized before the Renaissance? There was Islamic civilization and there was barbarism. And the West was the Christian West during this period, was clearly part of a barbaric barbarism. Now, out of this barbarism arose a civilization primarily with the beginnings of the Renaissance. That civilization manifested itself during the Renaissance in primarily art, the beginnings of science, the beginnings of philosophy, particularly at the towards the end of the Renaissance and into the Baroque period. There is real philosophical beginnings of real philosophical innovation. Suddenly art goes through the roof, the innovations of art. But that is all a product of, you know, the 15th century and on. There is no Western civilization before that. The same people live in the West. To some extent, the same political authorities are in the West, but there's nothing civilized about it. There are no great achievements. And one of the things Sullivan mentions is this grand cathedral that I don't have the dates on what it was built, but my guess is it was built before the Renaissance. And I don't consider that an achievement. And I don't consider that enough to qualify civilization. Civilization requires more than a building, particularly more than a building whose only purpose is a glory to God, in other words, and is built on the backs of the poor peasantry, the poor workers of the time. It much more to me is like the pyramids, which, yes, you could say a symbol of Egyptian civilization, not a good civilization in particular. And Egypt, if they'd only built the pyramids, we wouldn't be that impressed. It's everything else that they did. And again, not a particularly good civilization, a pretty primitive civilization, a pretty backward civilization as compared to what comes immediately afterwards, which is Greece. So the real achievements of the West, the real civilizational achievements, the cultural achievements only start from the Renaissance. And then primarily in the arts, then slowly into science and ultimately into every aspect of human life. Now, what marks Western civilization is, in a sense, a connection to the Greeks and a connection to particular view that Greece had of mankind. So if you look at the art of the Renaissance, the art of the Renaissance is clearly, heavily influenced by Greek art. Probably what they knew of Greek art and what does Greek art express? What it expresses, a certain view of man, a certain view of human beings. It is a view that human beings are heroic, capable, competent, able, efficacious in this world. It is this worldly view that you can see in Michelangelo's David, which I talked about in the debate and I've talked about many times on the show. But you can see it in Michelangelo's Piata, which is a religious topic, subject, but a secular theme, mother and a son who's died, but the son is heroic, the son is magnificent. And the mother, sad and proud, devastated and proud of her son. It's so touching, it's so moving, it's so emotional. It's so powerful. But each figure, the mother, Mary and Jesus, are individuals with individual characteristics, individual facial expressions, individual bodies. Jesus is a Greek God, a heroic body of a God. And you see this in the Renaissance, even when they paint religious themes, the people are individuals, the people have emotions, the people have character. As compared, for example, to the pre-Venice Art, which is flat, no emotion, no character. Everybody looks the same, there's no distinction, there's no heroism, there's no efficaciousness, there's just people, usually in very religious poses, flat, unmoving, unengaged. So there's a massive shift in Western culture from pre-Venice Art to Renaissance. And what characterizes it is primarily viewing the individual as worthwhile. And this is the idea they get from the Greeks. They get it from Greek art and they get it from Greek philosophy. Even Greek philosophy, we would maybe disagree with, let's say, Plato, has an enormous respect for the individual and for the human mind, and for the individual's pursuit of happiness. So we have, we have a culture, a civilization emerging during the Renaissance with an implicit, because it's in the art, it's not necessarily anywhere else, it's in the art, respect for the individual, an implicit respect for happiness, an implicit respect for reason still implicit, not philosophical. But suddenly there, you know, again, I've recommended this before, but I recommended again, Walter Isaacson's book on Leonardo da Vinci is fabulous, partially because it brings out, it brings out the fact that, you know, Leonardo da Vinci was this amazing scientist, innovator, engineer, but scientist, and that he was respected as such, that there was a respect for his outlandish character. He was quite, he was quite something in terms of his just behavior and character. And for his mind, a massive respect for his mind, for his scientific mind, for his mathematical mind, for his engineering mind, that's new. Nobody cared 200 years earlier. There's a good chance he would have been burnt at the stake 200 years earlier. So Western civilization is born out of sudden ideas that they accept from the Greeks. And it's born more implicitly than explicitly. It's born in the art before it's born in the philosophy, because the art is a consequence of philosophy they are reading from Greece, the Plato, the Aristotle, Aristotle more than anything. And this respect for the individual and respect for reason is manifest now in the sculpture, in the painting of the era. And this is a period where you also get, you know, Andrew Sullivan mentioned Shakespeare, but you also got Shakespeare. And Shakespeare, again, is philosophically terrible. And this is the problem that the implicit ideas can be recreated in the sculpture and the paintings, but when it comes to literature, they don't have the philosophical grounding in order to manifest them. So again, they remain implicit. But in Shakespeare, these ideas implicit in his characterization, in his interesting characters, in his understanding of evil, his understanding of, you know, the choices people make. There's a sudden determinism in Shakespeare. There's a big chunk of determinism in Shakespeare, just like there is in Greek plays. But you can see there are larger than life characters for good and evil. And there is a beautiful language in the service of all this. So clearly a massive achievement. I mean, the plays of Shakespeare are some of the greatest achievements of world literature. And it's no accident that they come during this period. The Renaissance, late Renaissance into the Baroque. So, but from the beginning, Western civilization is about the individual and it's only in the Enlightenment. And in a sense, even a reformation, if you will, is an expression of this. It's a rebellion against authority, at least worldly authority. It's a rebellion within the religion saying, within Christianity saying, but I can have an individual connection to God. I don't need the Pope. I don't need the hierarchy. I don't need the priests. I can communicate with God directly. Now, that is a huge step forward. Now, Protestantism is very problematic from lots of other respects. But the idea of the individuals in a sense, responsibility for his own religion is a powerful one. And then, of course, we get the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment puts, in a sense, at least attempts to put philosophy to this spirit. The idea of individual rights, which formalizes the idea of individualism politically and a hint of a moral morality and the idea of the pursuit of happiness and the virtue of the pursuit of happiness. The idea of reason, the efficaciousness of reason, the importance of reason, the idea that one knowledge comes from reason. All of these are achievements in the Enlightenment. And that, that Enlightenment, is what makes possible the declaration of independence. It makes possible America and it makes possible the industry of evolution, which politically and economically are the great achievements of Western civilization. Western civilization is the greatest civilization and the, because it has the greatest achievements in human history. Whether it's artistic achievements from the sculpture painting of the early Renaissance through Michelangelo, through Leonardo and Raphael, through Bernini, through the Baroque, into the 18th century and 19th century and the 19th century sculpture and painting and literature to who go and, and ultimately the architecture, as I mentioned on the show of, of Frank Lloyd Wright, all of that emphasizing individualism, the individual, a kind of an emotional preconceptual level and so all of that and then, and then through all that is the second threat. It was the, you know, respect for reason, the idea of the importance of science, again, going from Michelangelo, from Michelangelo, from, not Michelangelo, from Leonardo, to Galileo, to Copernicus, Kempler, to Newton and the whole scientific revolution that follows. That's Western civilization and that leads to a politics, a certain political creation, the respect for the individual, the respect for the human mind leads the declaration of independence, which unleashes political freedom upon the world and brings us the industrial revolution. So artistically, the greatest achievements ever, right, from the Renaissance through the, through the, the 19th century in music and in literature and sculpture and painting and everything, politically, the greatest achievement was the creation of the United States of America. Economically and politically, capitalism and the industrial revolution are its great achievements. That is what Western civilization is. It is that respect for the individual and for reason and everything that that produces, which is all the wealth we have in the world today, spiritual and material. Yet today, Western civilization is under attack. It's under attack with the idea from all kinds of directions. The egalitarian's hate it because they say you, and there's nothing better than anything else. Well, and even Andrew Sullivan, to some extent, suggested during a debate that, well, life kind of sucks today. Hunter-gatherers maybe had it better. They lived longer, healthier, happier lives. Really? Really? That all the technology and the wealth and success that we've had only brings problems, no benefits. Really? So there's this idea that no, all cultures are the same, all cultures are equal. Cultures that promote human life. Cultures that develop the spirit, that develop, that make us rich, that provide us with technology, that provide us with medicine, provide us with all these things. They equal to cultures that abuse women, that engage in general, female genital mutilation, that engage in women not being able to drive and not being able to own property or cultures that where people still go out and gather food that have no surplus, that live in huts, all of those are the same. There's no difference. So there's the egalitarian perspective and we'll talk about in a minute where that comes from. Right? But there's also those who would say, to some extent Andrew, yeah, Western civilization is too material and, you know, where is that deep religiosity that was so wonderful during the dark ages? And there's a religionist attack today on Western civilization. We've taken it too far. I, we saw that when I talked about some of the debates within a conservative movement primarily out of the Catholics, the first things that say there's too much individualism today in the West. There's too much respect for the individual. Then there's the left criticism. Western civilization was built in slavery. There's a whole 1619 project out of the New York Times, which I'll have to do a show on, but everything's, everything is just, everything was built in slaving colonialism. The West did nothing, achieved nothing, produced nothing that is not on the backs of Native Americans, blacks, Indians, Indians from India, colonialism and so on. And of course the attacks are much deeper than that. We have attacks on the two foundational elements of Western civilization and these are the two enemies. The real enemies of Western civilization are those who reject reason and those who reject individualism and the individual's moral right to pursue his own happiness and they come in the form mystics who attack reason, mystics who could be religious. So there's a growing movement today to present the dark ages as nice. Oh, huge achievements. Christian civilization, wonderful, just as good as the Renaissance. Renaissance is not a change. So, so there's the religious element and you've seen that again rise up today, I think primarily on the right, but then you see the secular religions and what makes the religions is the rejection of reason. And it was interesting that Andrew Sullivan actually recognized that these were secular religions. Communism, fascism, really all forms of tribalism, intersectionality, much of what the left preaches today, much of what the nutty left preaches today is religion in the sense that it is not backed by argument is not backed by reason. It is not backed by logic and just like a religion that typically is like environmentalism is a good example. There's original sin, there's commandments, there's a God, there's sacrifice. So any attack of reason against reason, whether it comes in the form of Marx or Hegel or comes in the form of intersectionality feminism or, you know, race, race, what's it? Critical racial theory or whatever it's called or whether it comes in a form of white supremacists. All of those are fundamentally anti-Western civilization. All of those reject a fundamental premise, cause, foundation of what Western civilization relies on and is based on. Somebody says the volume is low. Is your volume low? If anybody, anybody can indicate. Some reason I don't have a chat on Facebook, but on, on YouTube is the, it's fluctuating only cause I move in and out and I yell and then stop yelling and stuff like that. But is the volume low? I don't, volume is, I think it's, I mean, the settings are the same. It should be good. Okay. The volume is fine. Everybody says. So the enemy is the enemy, the enemy is the enemy and reason it's, it's always has been saying that sense in that sense. I believe Christianity is anti-Western civilization. It's an enemy of Western civilization in that it rejects the application of reason to all human issues. I think communism is not as many people remember many people consider like communism. Oh, that's the bad part of Western civilization. No, that is the forces that are always around in our culture that hate Western civilization, that rejects Western civilization fighting against it. Fascism, tribalism, white supremacism, the radical left, these are all anti-Western forces. And in that sense, Western civilization has always had inside of it at its core among its people, these ideas, the anti-Western ideas have always been present, primarily religion. As Michelangelo is sculpting the David, he is also a, he becomes more and more deeply religious as he gets older, but he is religious. He has within him the ideas that destroy David, that destroy the ability of anybody to produce a David, of anybody to enjoy a David, of anybody to appreciate a David or to stand a David. And indeed, I think real Christians, when they look at David, yeah, they can't, you know, relates to some biblical hero or something, but they don't get the profound metaphysical meaning of the sculpture and their enjoyment of it is limited. I think that's true of anybody who does not believe human beings are heroic and have heroic potential. So the enemies of Western civilization are always being amongst us and being a part of the heroes of Western civilization, you've got the great scientists who are so very religious. You've got some of the founding fathers who are so very religious on the one hand, writing that you have an inalienable right to pursuit of happiness and on the other hand, justifying altruism in its Christian sense. So communism, fascism, all the mystical forces, ideas, people out there, even though geographically they're in our midst, they're in the West, they're surrounded by civilization. And to some extent, they might even be contributing to that civilization, to the extent that they take those ideas seriously, to that extent, they are the enemies of civilization, the enemies of civilization. So, of course, that's at the level of reason. The same thing goes for individualism. To the extent that we've over to tribalism, to the respect that we respect tribalism, to the extent that there are tribes among us and people among us who push for tribalism of whatever sort of the intersectionality sort of the, you know, what's it called, racial identity sort of the left or of the white supremacist sort of the right, to the extent that people are tribal, they are anti-Western. They are rejecting the fundamental premise of Western civilization, to the extent that they play nation above self, tribe among self, collective above self, race above self, ethnic group above self, they are rejecting the very heart, the very idea of Western civilization. So, the enemies of Western civilization amongst us are anybody who holds tribal and mystical ideas and one of the reasons we are seeing our civilization in decline is because many people around us, left and right, hold ideas that undercut, that are anti, fundamentally anti the West and this goes back to a theme I in a sense keep returning to, which is that our job is to save the Enlightenment because the Enlightenment is the philosophical foundation of Western civilization. It's not to teach every Western thinker where ever lived, it's not to embrace every Western artist, so-called artists who ever lived Kandinsky is not an artist, he doesn't contribute, he's not contributed to Western civilization. It's that we need to identify the co-ideas, the co-products, the co-creations of the West and that is what we should celebrate and teach and philosophically and politically it's the Enlightenment and then we need to improve on it because the Enlightenment is being attacked consistently from Kant, it was so from so to Kant, to Hegel, to Schopenhauer, to Marx, to Nietzsche the Enlightenment is under massive attack and it is only Ayn Rand who stands in defense of the Enlightenment. It is only Ayn Rand who stands in defense of Western civilization. So if you care about Western civilization, you got a sense that there's something good here, that there's something worth preserving here, that there's something important here that what needs to be defended, what needs to be promoted, what needs to be brought into the world are the ideas of Ayn Rand. The ideas of Ayn Rand, the great art of the Renaissance through the 19th century and the great thinkers of the Enlightenment. That is, that is the, what it's going to take to defend Western civilization. No, no shortcuts and indeed part of that defense is going to mean a rejection of religion, a rejection of communism, a rejection of race as meaningful as having any meaning as contributing anything to civilization. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think, meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, whims or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist. Using the super chat and I noticed yesterday when I appealed for support for the show, many of you step forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. 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