 radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Saturday, December 2nd, as Catherine says, Happy December, everybody, and Merry Christmas. Is it too early to say Merry Christmas? I don't know if it's too early or not, but Merry Christmas, hopefully you're already doing some of your Christmas shopping. Important, important to do your Christmas shopping. All right, let's see. Before we get rolling, a few announcements about future shows. So a few things. One, Don Watkins will be joining us on Thursday to talk about effective egoism as opposed to effective altruism. We're going to talk about effective egoism, which is this new book, which I hope you're all already bought, pre-ordered, got, but if you haven't, that would be a great Christmas gift. Because if you haven't joined the conversation on Thursday, and you can, and you'll be highly motivated to buy the book after you hear Don Watkins talking about it. That is Thursday, the following Thursday, so in two weeks, we've got Gina Gorlin on talk about whatever we'll see, right? So Gina will join us in two weeks. We've got Don next week. And then those are both on Thursdays. And then, yeah, I wanted to remind you, I'm not sure what the other Thursdays are going to be, but I wanted to remind you that we will be doing a fundraising podcast, YouTube show on the 31st of December, we'll do a review of the year, and it'll be at 2 p.m. East Coast time, and it'll be three hours long, and you can come in and out whenever you want. Just bring your checkbook or your credit card or whatever it may be. We're going to try to raise at least $10,000 during the fundraising show on December 31st. So that, I think, is the updates on the shows coming up. The rest of the schedule is pretty much set. I mean, it's pretty much normal, so I don't expect any deviations from our programming. We're pretty much set. The news roundups every day through December and evening shows on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and then the Saturdays. The 8 p.m. show, which is this show, which is going to be the positive show, the show where we talk about something positive, positive philosophy, positive inspiration, positive ideas, where we're not going to talk about the news, the news. So Maximus says we should do $60,000. Well, Maximus, if you want to do a $30,000 match, we can shoot for $60,000. Maybe we'd get that, right? Everybody needs to put their money where their chat is, where their chat comment is. That I think is the story. All right, let's see what else do we want to do. I think we're all set. Don't forget, you can ask questions, use the super chat. You can support the show with a sticker. And if you can like the show before you leave, like it, it helps the algorithm. And also you can actually, and should, subscribe to the show. You can subscribe to the show, and that'll be great. You'll hear about future shows when they go live, and you'll be able to follow the Iran Book show much easier. Oh yeah, one more announcement. One more announcement, in particular to those of you out there. I know there are not many, but there are some who speak Hebrew. I will be doing my first Iran Book show in Hebrew on Thursday at 10am East Coast time. But that makes it 5pm, 5pm, I think that's right, 5pm Israel time. We will be doing our first show in Hebrew. Boaz Arad from Israel will be joining me. He'll be my MC. He'll be asking me questions, make it a little easier for me, given that I'm not used to talking for so long and so fluently in Hebrew. So it's going to be a challenge for me. Because certainly the first few shows are going to be hard. So those of you who know Hebrew, who would like to hear it, join us. It will be in, the first show will be on the current state situation in Israel. We'll talk about just war theory, and of course I'll take questions from super chats and others. It will be broadcast on this channel, so you might get, if you're a subscriber, you might get notified that I'm going live, but it will say Hebrew. So please, you can join just to see what it's like to listen to me in Hebrew, but don't waste your time. You can also put on, YouTube has a great simultaneous translation thing, so maybe you can use that and get it translated so that would be cool. Yeah, now I really do think we're done with announcements. All right, let's jump in. So as you know, I have been reading this book, Dominion, the last few weeks. I just finished it this morning on the elliptical. And it's a really, really interesting book. Huh, okay, I just realized I misplaced something. Anyway, it's a really, really interesting book, and I'll be talking about it more in a future episode, on a future show, we'll definitely be talking about the book. But one of the conclusions that it comes to, and really one of the assumptions it makes, and then I think it's trying to prove the assumption it makes. And I think it does prove it. One of the things that it shows, one of the things that illustrates, one of the things that it really convincingly shows is that our modern world, that in our modern world, the morality that guides almost every aspect of our modern world, every aspect of life, as an explicit morality, and in our modern world, the morality that dominates left, right, center, woke, Christian, moderate, the whole gamut, the whole thing, from communists to woke to pretty much everybody. The only people he assumes this is not true of, and there's a real question about that, which is interesting, we'll talk about that when we talk about the book itself, is fascist. He doesn't think this applies to the fascists and to the Nazis. But pretty much everybody else is guided by altruism, or in other words, is guided by a specific Christian view of morality. That is, the Christian view of morality is the dominant view of morality, shaped, all, you know, has been the dominant view of morality. For the entire history of the West, it is, he argues, a unique morality. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And that it is, it dominates, and it's everywhere. And we should just acknowledge as a consequence that we live in a world that is Christian, that was created by Christians, made by Christians. And that the morality of it, every aspect of it, every piece of it of the world that we live in, because of this morality, is indeed fundamentally Christian. He is, I think, agnostic or an atheist, or whoever you want to call it, I think, but his point is it doesn't really matter. Even the most secular people are ultimately influenced through and through by Christianity, I think he overdoes that argument. But they are, they all hold a Christian moral belief. And what is that Christian moral belief? The Christian moral belief is that every single one of us owes a duty, a responsibility. Every single one of us is priming moral responsibility in life. Yes, it will be positive, don't worry, Tessa. Every one of us is moral responsibility in life, is service to the meek, the poor. And that is, that is morality. The morality fundamentally is to view all human be, all human life is equal. All human life is equally valuable. And that those who have owe it to those who do not have. And Christianity, various forms of Christianity, take it to various applications. Applications are different in terms of how they apply it. But Christians are, he shows very clearly how it's the Christian morality that animates communism. Indeed, it is the Christians who were the first communists. And were communists way back a thousand years ago, they were communist communes motivated by Jesus and Paul, inspired by Jesus and Paul. And indeed woke and it's all inspired, you know, the whole intersectionality is motivated by a Christian morality that says that suffering, weakness, meekness must be sacrificed too. And that the strong must sacrifice. So that is an historical claim, which I think is actually absolutely true. And it's really, really important to understand that our culture is everywhere and in everything infused with the Christian morality. It dominates our entire political conversation. It dominates our philosophical conversations. It dominates the morality that we learn and study and embrace and internalize. And as a consequence of that, even those of us who ultimately reject it, it's just it dominates our subconscious and our implicit understanding of what good is and morality is. What good is and morality is. And it's only in that context, I think one can understand why egoism, selfishness, is so hard. It's so hard to explain it to people. It's so hard to convince people. And it's so hard for all of us, I think those are convinced and do want to embrace it. It's so hard for us to actually live it because it goes against so much of what we were taught and what people we respected believed in. It goes so much against the literature that we read. It goes so much against what our elders and what our philosophers and what smart people out there in the world continuously tell us is morality. So it's very, very, very difficult. And it's completely understandable that it's difficult to explain this, to convince people, and so on. But I want to focus more importantly on the difficulty and the challenge and the importance of overcoming it in your own subconscious. Overcoming it in your own, well, not subconscious, in your own mind, in your own action, in your own life. Life, according to Objectivism, according to Dain Wain, life is to be lived, lived in pursuit of one's own life, one's own survival. Indeed, according to Rand, values only mean something in the context of the pursuit of life. That which one acts to gain a keep for what? Why should anybody act to get a keep anything? And indeed, all living organisms act to gain a keep, something, stuff, values, because they're in pursuit of life, in pursuit of the organism's life, one's own life. So the way to live a selfish life, the way to live an egoistic life, the way to live a self-interested life, and I think those three are basically the same thing, they mean the same thing, selfish, egoist, self-interested. They might strike some people as some milder answer, but they're all the same thing. They all say your purpose in life is to live for you, for the achievement of your life, which means survival, which means the value that you need in order to survive, and survival for a conceptual being is not just biological, it's not just live, die, but it's how you live. Survival for a human being is flourishing, succeeding, as living, survival ultimately is the success in living, and the success in living for a human being is more than just breathing in your heart beating. It's about the kind of life that you live. So to be selfish is to pursue the best life that you can live, to be selfish is to pursue a life of achievement, achievement of values, but not any values, not any values. We're not subjective as just pursue whatever you want to pursue, whatever you feel like, the pursuit of those values that are good for you, that are pro-your-life, that help you achieve, flourishing, achieve success at living. So a big part of life is figuring out what are the values that make life successful for me, what are the values that I need to pursue in order to achieve, in order to succeed, in order to live the best life that I can live, what are the values that truly enhance my life, and you might start with what do I love, what do I want, what I desire, what I feel, but every one of those values need to be screened, needs to be thought about from the context of is this good for me? And of course to be able to evaluate whether something is good for you, you need to know what kind of a being you are, and this is again part of what so many people misunderstand about being selfish, being self-interested, is they don't take that extra step of, well but wait a minute, what kind of a being am I? There are people out there who embrace a kind of I'll do whatever I feel like doing, I'll do whatever I want to do, to hell with everything, without really contemplating the kind of being that they are, and what this particular being, human beings, requires in order to thrive, survive, succeed, and this is part of Invan's crucial identification, whereas it's true in a sense that Nietzsche rejects altruism, rejects the idea of living for others, rejects the idea of sacrifice, rejects the idea of pain, but what is he placing instead? I mean really nothing for most people, and then for those who are, I don't know, particularly exceptional, he replaces it with whim ultimately, with the will, with whatever you want, whatever you desire, with no thought about my desires, what of my whims, what of the things that I will actually good, and what or not, and what is the standard of that good? The standard is your life, the standard is your life, but okay, but what does that even mean? What kind of a life? What kind of a being am I? What kind of a life can a being like human beings live? There's no answer to that, nobody, nobody, I mean this is part of Rand's genius, is that she asks this and then she takes the answer throughout her philosophy, throughout her philosophy as pertain to man, and this is why there's a sense in which you cannot come up with Rand's moral code, you cannot come up with a proper morality of self-interest without having a view at least of epistemology, without having a view of man's unique means of knowing the world, so what kind of being are we? We're a rational being. What differentiates us from other animals is our ability to reason, and it's not just an ability among many abilities, it's not just that we happen to have the capacity to reason, but a reason is the way in which we survive, reason is what defines our survival and defines our ability to thrive, reason is the means by which we attain all life-affirming values, including food and water and clothing and shelter. We don't have an instinct for any of those, they all need to be figured out and worked on and improved and they all need the use of reason. So what is the standard by which we evaluate our values, are they pro-life or anti-life? Well the mechanism is to understand those values rationally, to understand the impact they have on you and on the world, to understand the kind of life that's available to reasoning being, a life of reason, a life of thinking, a life of being rational and structuring your life around that. So yes, we have desires, we have whims, we have wants, and many of them are completely legitimate and wonderful, and of course those emotions where we express all that are fantastic, Inrend is not one to deny or repress or suppress, not advocating for emotional repression, quite the contrary. We should understand those emotions, we should understand our wants and our desires, but then figure out which ones of them are really good for us, which one of them lead ultimately to a life well lived, a life of flourishing, and over time what happens over time, and this is really what happens over time, as one takes one morality more and more seriously, as one integrates it more and more into life, as one evaluates all those wants and desires based on a standard, a rational standard, and understands which of them are legitimate and which are not, which of them are values one really wants to pursue and which are not, which are fantasies, fantasies of things that one does not pursue, and which are those worthy of pursuing, over time one's desires and one's emotions will change and fit in to one's ideas. I mean this is ultimately the answer to one of the most common criticisms of egoism, of selfishness, one articulated I think very well by Ben Shapiro, right? What is Ben Shapiro's criticism of selfishness? Well I mean you're married, you have kids, you're at a bar, and there's this amazingly beautiful woman at the bar. Well selfishness says, go ahead on her, and if she's available go sleep with her, because why? Because you desire her, because she's beautiful and sexy and so on. And it's quite possible that you might be in that bar and desire her. But for an egoist, for somebody who's selfish, that's not enough. We don't act on our desires. We evaluate the desires first, right? I desire her but do I really want her? Do I want the consequences of sleeping with her? Do I want the risk to my marriage? Do I want just the sex to engage the sex with somebody I don't know who just happens to be hot and beautiful? Do I want all those things? Are those things really a value in the sense that are those things really consistent with my life? Are those things really going to make my life better? Are they going to enhance my ability to flourish as a human being? And if the answer's no, and I think it is in a case like this, then I mean assuming you love your wife and you want the relation to continue and you have a healthy attitude towards sex, then the answer's no. And it's easy and it's a selfish answer. It's because it's not good for me. It's not healthy for me. It doesn't increase the possibility of flourishing of happiness ultimately. It does the opposite. Now I think what happens over time is once one integrates fully the values of sex, of beauty, of flourishing, of happiness, of integrity, and everything else. Once that fully integrated, then you don't desire the hot chick at the bar. She's just a hot chick. You might look and say, ooh, hot chick, but you don't literally desire her. The desire goes away. And the desire goes away because it's no longer consistent with your real values. So again to be selfish is to pick and choose of all the potential possible values out there, all the potential possible things that you could act again or keep, things that you could pursue to pick those that are going to contribute to your life best and things that will contribute to your life best while taking into account the full range of one's life, not the next three seconds, not just the few people around here, but the full context of your life. Now that's not always easy. And mistakes are going to happen and one needs to embrace that fact because if you're overly afraid of mistakes you won't never act. I've talked about before about the need to take risk in life and not to fear too much and not to paralyze yourself through fear. So to be selfish is to pursue rational values. It's to pursue that which leads to your flourishing, your happiness in the full context of your life with a full understanding of what you want, desire, love, like, love, which of those are healthy, which of those are not with full regard to you, yourself. I mean we're not kidding when we say selfish in the sense that your decision needs to be about you, what will make your life better. Now does that mean there's another caricature of egoism assumes? Does that mean that since I only care about myself, I don't therefore care about anybody else? Well of course not. Why not? Well because your life is involved with other people. Other people have the potential to be enormous contributors to your flourishing, to your being, to your happiness. And therefore considering the potential value that other people represent for you is super selfish and super important. It's not that you don't think about other people. It's not that you don't consider other people. It's not that you don't care about other people. You do. But you don't think of them the same. You don't view them all as the same. You don't value them all as the same. One of the things that being selfish requires in everything is discrimination. It's to discriminate between those who add value to your life, those who don't, and those who actually create disvalue in your life, create real harm in your life, and to be able to tell the difference and then act accordingly. I mean this is what the virtue of justice actually means. The virtue of justice means evaluating people based on how good, bad, productive, destructive they are, and giving people in terms of your relationship with them what they deserve. Acting based, you know, with regard to them, based on what they deserve. And that's justice and that's selfish. The people who contribute to your life in one way or another deserve to be treated positively. People who are neutral, not bothering you, you know, don't bother them. The people who do bother you separate yourself from them. Disengage. Or, you know, if they've acquired it, deal with them however they need to be dealt with. So running at you with a knife, shoot them, right? Depends on the level of threat that they constitute for you. So treat other people based on their contribution to your life. Recognizing and based on the value that they present for your life. So human life qua human life is a value to anybody who values his own life. And it's anybody who realizes the potential other human beings have to benefit himself. As a consequence, if you cannot judge somebody, if they're a stranger, then, you know, the right approach to that should be approach of benevolence. Under the assumption that they are will be, could be, potentially a good human being and therefore a value to you. And therefore somebody who actually in one way or another contributes to your life. But that really is the standard. It's super selfish. Is this good for me or isn't it? Is this human being adding to my life or aren't they? And this should really be applied to every relationship that you have. Romantic relationships, friendships, family. Is this a positive? Is it negative? I mean it could be indifference, but then it requires indifference. And it's tough. It's tough to get the conclusion is about people you might be close to that they are actually destructive to your life. But it's the kind of conclusions that need justice demands. Your life demands being egoistic or selfish demands that you take. You are not a sacrificial animal. You are not there to help others. You are not there to serve others. You are not there to sacrifice and live for others, to embrace pain for others. I mean one of the things that Dominion does a very good job of is illustrating how the symbol of Christ dying on a cross is such a powerful symbol of that anti-life morality. The morality of sacrifice, the morality of placing other people's well-being above your own. And indeed the willingness to get on a cross, to suffer the consequence of a cross, not for anything that will benefit you in some way or another, but because it will help them. Your life is the standard. I mean so there might be people basically are good and there might be some people out there that need your help and if you just got on that cross and nailed yourself to it they would be better off. How big of a value are they to you? Not that big. Begin to have to give up your life? No. In that sense nobody is that valuable as to give up your life in that way. Some people important enough to you to really risk your life? Sure. Your kid's wife hopefully, your best friend. I mean there's a story, probably a lot of these kind of stories from October 7th of a father and two young children running away from the terrorists and they hide, I think in a kitchen, they hide in the kitchen and the terrorist throws a grenade at them and the father you know literally jumps on the grenade to save his kids and he does. So I get that and that can be completely selfish in the sense that your children are such a value to you and you have such a responsibility by bringing them into the world that not acting, not doing everything that you can to keep them alive is just a betrayal of your own values, a betrayal of your own life, a betrayal of your integrity, a betrayal of the sense of justice. So it's profoundly selfish but that's like emergencies, that's like so where that's that's not what life is really about and you know it's not about jumping in grenades, it's about living. It's what Atlushock taught me. I was ready to jump in grenades, I was looking for grenades to jump on. I mean that's what nobility and virtue and being a good guy meant. The good guys jumped on grenades, that's what they did. They sacrificed themselves for some greater good. What Atlushock taught me is no the greater good is you, your life, your values, your happiness, your own flourishing and they are almost never occasions where you have to jump and get a grenade for that and jumping in grenades is easy. I mean I don't mean that literally but it's easy in the sense that it doesn't require much thought, doesn't require much effort. What really requires thought and effort is living, is taking this abstract idea of you know man as a rational animal, one meets the use reason in order to define one's values, one then needs to pursue those values with vigor, one then needs to figure out how to pursue those values in a rational way, keeping the context of life around you, that is all, that is all you know it requires work, requires thinking, requires figuring out, it sometimes requires sitting at your desk and really introspecting and really thinking about these things and that's the image that if we could get people to consider that a selfish man is a thinker, a selfish human being thinks, is a problem solver, the biggest problem in life is what values should I pursue and how should I pursue them, that's it, much more difficult than any problem in physics or math and in some way not that hard once you have the tool that the tools that Ayn Rand has provided us, an ethical code that Ayn Rand has provided us, then it's not that hard because she's given us this you know this massive head start, we've got these seven virtues that you know if we practice these virtues yeah they all make sense, they all integrate with this idea of man as a rational being, they all integrate with rationality, they all lead you know they're all based on the idea that life is the standard of value, they all are leading towards happiness and flourishing and fulfillment, they're based on the facts of reality, observed reality and what happens with people, do or do not engage in these virtues and they're all logically you know derived from the very nature of man that again we know by observing reality, all right so at the end of the day to be selfish is to live a moral life, a moral life based on virtues and values that are consistent with rationality, consistent with our nature as human beings, consistent with reason and rationality and the reward is life, the reward is living a great life and you know that is what you should be pursuing, the world around you is demanding other stuff from you, the world around you wants you to sacrifice, the world around you wants me to give in, wants you to abandon your values, the world around you wants you to conform, wants you to become one of a tribe, wants you to stop thinking, follow the leader and follow the hood and the challenge of life is the challenge of life in this world in this crazy irrational world, it's to stand up to all that pressure, to stand up to the people around you demand that you abandon your path, that you abandon being selfish, that you abandon your reason, your conclusions and the path that that takes you on and again as I said you will make mistakes, you will come crashing down once in a while because of those mistakes, learn from them, grow with them, you can't be infallible, there is no such thing but with the right methodology even when you make mistakes you will ultimately move in the right direction because you will learn from them you will advance, you will progress, you will make your life better and what's the point if not, I say this often but it needs repeating in life you do not get a do-over you don't get to do it again, you don't get to try again in life every second that passes will never come back you will never get it again, you are every minute you are growing older you're getting in that sense closer to the end, take advantage of every single second every single minute you have, make the most of it, make the most of it by thinking, identifying values, pursuing them, achieving them, pushing yourself, challenging yourself at the same time, yes, dealing with the BS that the world is throwing at you but viewing that as the marginal, the relatively unimportant, what's important is your values, your time, your life, your happiness, your progress so bat those problems away and keep driving forward keep thinking, acting, pursuing so be bold, be strong and once you figure out that your passions and your desires make sense, are rational, go pursue them, go pursue them and don't let don't let the people around you stop you, don't let the culture around you stop you, don't let politics stop you, don't let the craziness in the world around us stop you, this is my point about that I've made in the past about, you know, stop listening to the news, stop following every little development that has little impact on your own life, stop obsessing about things that you cannot change, focusing on that entire universe of things you can change, focus on those parts of life that are within your control, focus on making your life the best that it can be in the context of the world in which we live all right now yeah try to, it would be great to get a lot of questions about this topic, about being egoistic, being selfish, what it means, how to apply it, things like that, it would be great so please think about questions like that, anything if anything I said raised an issue, raised a question or you have had a question or well you know about these things please do that but so focus the questions on that I'll take questions on anything right but you know uh let's see if we can get as many questions as we can about this topic so we can chew it and integrate it and and kind of really get a get a good good handle on it all right um David a few weeks ago you said the basic function of the markets, oh we're going to markets okay, is concentrating information into price especially information at the margins great answer to my question but could you expand what you mean at the margin yeah I mean what I mean by the margin is that people trade on all kind of information or all kinds of knowledge or or not on whim there's a lot of you know noise in the market but at the end of the day the people who actually affect prices so you know who let's say there's a lot of noise in the market a lot of BS in the market that drives prices down the people with a better information will step in and buy and thus drive the price back up so prices in the end are determined not by the massive investors but by the marginal investor the the investor is willing to come in and at the margin buy that is buy at a higher price then exists right now and it's determined by those investors who are more confident so markets are not determined by majorities it's not democracy they're determined by the most confident the ones that have the best information and have shown that they have the best information or proven to themselves that they have the best information the ones that have the capital often that capital you get the capital by being right in the past and so and they are the ones that are ultimately over time impact prices they're the ones who take prices from where they are and change them based on the knowledge and based on the confidence that they have and and they're often what you call the marginal investor the investor that makes the difference the investor that makes the difference between just the noise of the market and and that price that actually provides added knowledge or added information I hope that is answers the question Andrew how does the environmentalist ethos to sacrifice the earth connect with christian morality well it does so um perfectly I think christian morality tells us that we are all sinners that we all fundamentally are born of sin and therefore sin is is is part of our nature and and that is perfect for the environmentalist movement which which holds that by the very existence of human beings we are destroying the thing of goodness the planet the environment and therefore we are all sinful just by existing just by being alive that is what defines our sinfulness just as in christianity our very birth is the origin of our of our sin and then of course we must take that object of um the altogrammarality the environment mother earth however you want to call it and in order to in order to fix or to redeem ourselves from the sin in order to to to gain points as a sinner we have to act to kind of work towards to sacrifice towards that thing we have sinned against and in this case one has to sacrifice to the environment to nature that is how we attain redemption we attain redemption through sacrifice that is a very christian thing think of Jesus he redeems all of our sins by sacrificing himself by going out there and fighting for i don't know for the trees and the plants and the worms and the and the and the snails we redeem ourselves from our sins and and our primary sin here is is being alive it's it's it's human beings changing the environment shaping the environment to fit our needs which is what human beings do it's how we survive so environmentalism is perfectly christian is through and through christian that's why i think that the combination of environmentalism christianity is so obvious that it's going to come that is an integrated anti-man ideology because environmentalism is about redemption it's about sacrifice it's about sin it's about original sin and the original sin is birth the original sin is being human because by our very nature as human beings see nature has not provided us with the means by which to survive without changing our environment to fit our needs and on scale changing that environment on scale to fit our needs that's what evolution is demands from us as human beings but that just makes our life all the more sinful that just reinforces the whole idea of original sin and our original sin so environmentalism christianity morality completely you know you know what what what was a human being a egoist how does the egos approach issues of environmentalism first of all it approaches the environment nature as a resource to pursue life it relates the nature as right how do i change it in order to make my life better how do i use my mind to reshape the world to feed myself code myself to build myself shelter to transport myself to fly to Mars essentially an egoist is thinking about all this around me a resources how do i apply these resources to making my life better and environmentalists says we're not in the business of making your life better we're in the business of redeeming you from the great sin of destroying this environment but that's how i survive yes that's what makes you sinful the very fact that you need to in order to survive you need to change the environment makes you essentially a sinner that's power god christianity so powerful in that sense the idea of jesus on that cross redeeming all of our sins is so powerful all right james people on the daily wire seem to be interviewing a lot of non-objectivists about i i nrand lately i wonder whom i i haven't seen that um who are they interviewing perhaps their audiences has discovered you and inquiring about objectivist ideas they might be feeling more threatened by her growing influence i mean we can certainly hope that that is the case and the people at the daily wire certainly know who i am and certainly all know who i nrand is and most of them have read i nrand we know that a bench appear oh we know uh that of of of knowles who's done who's done a number of interviews about the fountain head and about he did one on al ashok with an objectivist with eric daniels um i don't know if matt wash has read i nrand we know uh what's his name uh a tall bold guy um god his name is on the tip of my tongue um we know that most of people at the daily wire and we know that the daily wires actually put just an option on the weight to make atlas shrugged into a tv series so we know they have that intent clavin thank you apologist clavin we know clavin is is uh his red i nrand so you know we can hope that they um that they uh you know uh i i don't think i don't think much has changed i mean i i really think that all these guys have known i nrand for a long time clavin i remember being with clavin on pj tv do you guys remember pj tv a long long time ago used to go and do a regular live show on there on every friday i think uh anyway in a pj tv days clavin you know was often talking about i nrand and um in those days of course and then the tea party days uh i nrand was everywhere um you guys don't know pj tv wow yeah i mean it was huge about 10 15 years ago in conservative media it was the thing it was streaming it wasn't was it streaming it was uh or maybe it was tape shows it was like a tv channel all conservative i had my own show with with another guy uh with an economist from the investors business daily and then we had a guy interview us and every week we did a show and it was a lot of fun it's a lot of fun i don't know how many of those old shows made it up on youtube on another platform but but they are um they are pretty uh they're really cool we did hours and hours and hours of stuff um it's one of the reasons i'm surprised only of 35 000 subscribers is because i was exposed through fox and through pj tv and through all these other things to millions of people and where are they where are you guys why aren't you subscribing to my show come subscribe please maybe they don't know i have a show or maybe they've turned against me since or maybe they never like me who knows but um you know we're gonna grow don't forget to subscribe if you're not subscribed right now subscribe please um yeah i don't know i i don't know about the daily wire uh hopefully one of these days i'll have a chance to talk to bet your pure again and we can get to the bottom of this all right liam says uh do you think many objectivists become bitter and cynical because they finally have this amazing piece of mental technology integrated and think happiness is assured but as they attempt to apply it to our current nihilistic world it doesn't work no i don't i don't think so um i don't think so because it does work it works in this nihilistic world you just have to know how to deal with the nihilistic world and you have to include it in the context by which you so you might not be as happy you might not be as flourishing you might not be as successful as you would be otherwise but it doesn't mean it doesn't work indeed does no i i think what happens is objectivists become bitter and cynical to the extent that they do and there are plenty of those it's because they haven't completely integrated it they haven't taken this mental technology and completely thoroughly integrated it and because for some they are overly focused on other people which is what altruism conditions us to do and therefore they're totally focused on politics which is essentially other people and that focus on politics undermines their ability their focus their energy on integrating these ideas integrating this technology into their own life into their own value system into the day-to-day living that they have to do as selfish human beings so that they never do the work or they give up on that work because it's not affecting other people which is silly but but it's it's not unexpected again it's not unexpected the the the the core point here is sorry the core point here is that it's not unexpected because we grew up in a world of altruism we grew up in a world that tells you all the matters is other people you better focus on other people so a lot of people when they embrace objectivism they don't completely get rid of that they tone it down but still in the back of their head is what about other people what about the what that's what's important out there other people and they can't let go of that and that prevents them from fully integrating it makes them focus on things like politics more than they should it makes them focus on what other people thinking more than they should and and then what happens is they they're under enormous social pressure not to be objectivists to conform and i think they become cynical because they take that pressure they make too much of it they they they they take it to heart and it creates creates conflict within them should i continue to be selfish what does that mean how do i deal with other people whatever so most of the people who become cynical and bitter are people who have not fully integrated not fully understood not integrated into their lives completely uh let's see Andrew i think many struggle with evaluating whether a thing is a value long range but one shouldn't expect infallibility i like when you once said something matter of fact like get married and if it doesn't work you get divorced yeah i mean it's not i mean i say matter of factly it's not that easy it's difficult it's challenging it's heartbreaking often but you have to approach it that way you can't say god i i'm going to cripple myself i'm gonna straightjacket myself i'm gonna not act not date not go out because i might get divorced i'm gonna find a perfect person as if there really is such a thing to marry because i know that in the future so yes it is very hard to assess the consequence of every action that you take in the long run what is going to be the consequence in the long run and you can only do so much there's only so much you can project into the long run that's why a vow that says we're gonna be married forever is in many respects ridiculous because you have there's no way for you to project 40 years into the future particularly with regard to other human beings might change circumstances 40 years in the future is very very difficult to plan for you can do some things like we can save money for the future and we can make some projections about 40 years from now that are reasonable to do but it's not easy and just like with investing you're gonna make mistakes and with something like marriage you cannot diversify doesn't work right marry three people with the hope that one of them will be successful all at the same time right that doesn't work so Philippe says why marry why marry because because that relationship that dedicated relationship that intensity of that relationship is just the upside is massive when it does work it is amazingly good and for that matter for the time that it works even if it doesn't work forever it's it can be amazingly good partnerships generally Frank says partnerships are tricky indeed yeah I mean marriage is a partnership partnership generally are difficult because people change because it's hard to project clearly into the future and and infallibly into the future it's impossible to project so but that doesn't mean you don't act it means you have to take into account that you're taking on a risk the further out into the future you're projecting something particularly with regard to other people the more risky it is the more risk there is so you know you have to deal with that you can't give up on the value because it's risky you just have to take the risk into account and set your expectations appropriately and set your mental attitude appropriately but dive into things because you love them because they're beautiful because they're amazing because so don't not do I mean it could be like why should I start a company I might fail why do a startup I mean that was the attitude why get married I might get divorced why have children they might turn out rotten why anything why get in my car I might crash if that is the way you view reality you will not act you will not be pursuing values you will not be able to achieve anything Troy thank you Troy just came in and one big swoop got us over the target thank you Troy really really appreciate that Troy loves the positive shows in particular so thank you Troy let me see Mike thank you Ari thank you thank you these are all the stickers and Jeremy thank you and of course Troy for the 500 Australian dollars really really appreciate that all right let's see Michael can't stay long but wanted to say I watched all the light we cannot see you and your you and your show have been like the professor and his broadcast to me for the last seven years light in a darkening world thank you I really appreciate that thank you Michael but that's a real compliment so yeah I mean I will do it again I given that it's a positive show I will encourage everybody to go find all the light we cannot see it's on Netflix in the U.S. at least and go watch it it is truly inspiring and positive and fun well not fun but because it's serious but it really is it's positive and inspiring and and it is it does have this character of the professor who broadcasts and young young people listen to and it inspires them to live a good life I think ultimately ultimately to make the right decisions and and that's what you see in the movie in the in the show thank you Michael really appreciate it uh friend Harper can you differentiate egoism from individualism I understand that one is about who should benefit from your actions and the other is about how you should treat yourself and others is that accurate um I think that egoism is a moral concept and individualism is a political concept that is my understanding of it you contrast individualism with collectivism that is in a society who should you live for like in a in a political context how should we structure institutions what should they be protecting what should in a society what should we be focused on and individualism also you know says it's it's kind of universalizes egoism in a social context in a political context it puts it into the context of no we are organizing into society to protect the individual that's what individualism means like it's it's a bridge between it's like individual rights it serves the same function I think it's a bridge between ethics and politics it tells us where the focus should be what the world of government is what we should be protecting what we should care about. Egoism is more about well what should I live for what should I do as a as a human being what should my ultimate value be what should my standard be should be other people and other people could be any particular person or it could be a collective it could be it could be God right I mean so egoism is not just contrasted with collectivism egoism is contrasted with otherism which could mean sacrifice to God it could mean sacrifice the nature the environment it could be just sacrifice of the sake of sacrifice in a sense nihilism it could be sacrifice to a group which which now leads you to collectivism right so egoism is a is a is a fundamentally deeply moral concept about your standard of value who should be the beneficiary of your actions but again it's the measure of all things how it's the standard my life individualism is okay we're trying to structure a political system who towards what is it oriented towards the group or towards the individual towards the sacrifice in the individual to the group or towards the protection of the individual and his rights and his life I think that's right it's my best attempt at that all right uh David says what is the relationship between altruism and the regulatory state especially in the financial markets regulations seem aimed at making sure no one is acting in their self-interest regulations best interest being the obvious yeah I mean there's a lot of different ways in which regulations which altruism affect regulations altruism leads us towards particular forms of altruism reasons toward for example towards egalitarianism and therefore towards the idea that everybody must have the same amount of knowledge and must have the same access the same ability the same whatever which leads to a lot of the regulations in terms of information and insider trading and other other parts of of kind of the the regulatory scheme you know but fundamentally the fundamental way in which altruism relates to regulation is this we know that businessmen are fundamentally self-interested they are pursuers of profit and as a consequence you know we know that they will lie cheat and steal because our culture tells us over and over and over again the being self-interested means being immoral and being immoral means lying cheating and stealing and if a businessman is selfish therefore he's immoral therefore he's lying cheating and stealing well how do we we need them we kind of understand we need businessmen we don't want to socialize everything and be communists so we need businessmen but how do we how do we control that self-interest the desire how do we channel it i mean literally people talk this way into socially beneficial ways means well we do that by regulation we do that by placing somebody who has the well-being of the common good the well-being of the community the well-being of society in a position to be able to regulate control the one who is self-interested and thus make sure that we channel that self-interested motivation that greed in a socially productive way and all regulations about that we know i i use this example often in my talks right we know that without the elevator inspector elevator companies would build elevators that would drop and kill their inhabitants because we know as a culture that businessmen to make a profit will kill their customers any day so to prevent that we need an elevator inspector who can come in and guarantee that the elevator manufacturer builds good elevators that don't drop and kill people and that uh and in that way we can make sure the customers of the elevators are reassured and of course we have we still keep private enterprise going private individuals are still pursuing the profit motive around the elevator but we restrain them in a way that maximizes quote social well-being that's their approach that's why we have food inspectors and elevator inspectors and why we control financial markets because without it you would exploit your customers you would cheat them you would steal from them you would manipulate them you would do all these things to them so therefore you need a disinterested third party a disinterested third party to regulate the selfish and businessmen are selfish all right and more chewing how do you recommend mystics turned objectivists overcome fear of selfishness or feeling that selfishness is shameful how should one go about associating self selfishness with love um god i mean this is a good question for Gina Golan on thursday it's a psychological question more than anything but i think i think the the the first step one needs to take is to is to completely integrate and and gain an explicit understanding of selfishness and and and commit yourself to it and and and here i i think studying the ideas really going through that essay the objectivist ethics and and going through all the material that Lena Peacock has has has provided on um applying the ethics and really trying to understand it and internalize it and integrate it and then doing the integrating work that is doing the work through your values so so going through the work and that of course will help deal with the negative emotions but then sometimes but then you just have to do it right doing is half the work you have to just overcome the negative feelings you're gonna have them just gonna have to overcome and just do it and then watch what happens watch what happens to your own life see the benefits observe them introspect them right i mean i mean notice them pat yourself on the shoulder for doing a good job being selfish and therefore benefiting as a consequence so um you've gotta you've gotta do it and take pride in it and again that's gonna be uncomfortable overcome the comfort convince yourself that it's you should be convinced from studying the ideas that it's the right thing to do and just do what's right and then over time the emotional resistance will go away and keep thinking about that the ultimate motivation is the love of your own life the love of your own life it's not even so much about loving yourself it's about loving being alive right and and and that love is what's driving you and yeah completely realize my emotions are gonna play tricks on me because i didn't grow up in this environment i didn't grow up like this i've got a lot of baggage i'm just gonna have to deal with it and again life's too precious too short to not deal with it to compromise to sell out to to not live the fullest and he says how much for a movie review have one in mind for my christmas present to myself subtitled in portuguese if that's not a deal break it no i have no problem with subtitle movies it's five hundred dollars for a movie i've got two i still owe people two movies an album and a song that i still owe people i'm keeping track and we will be doing them in the in the days weeks to come it's a five hundred dollars let me know uh gene my parents would shame me when asked when asking for too much i still feel even today for example when out with friends making sure i don't burden them with my own once how do i overcome feeling guilty about being selfish i mean it's the same thing i just i just said first of all you've you've taken a big step towards that by recognizing it and and acknowledging it and identifying where it comes up that sense of guilt and now it's a question of you know you you understand it you know it now it's a question of fully embracing this idea that no i i there's no there's no reason for me to throw guilty about this and being selfish is not that i'm putting a burden on my friends it's just that i'm asserting myself just like some of them do and and doesn't mean i'm imposing on them it doesn't mean i'm forcing them i'm just asserting myself because these are the things i really want and just thinking about that i mean thinking about it is the first step and and walking through the scenarios where you felt guilty and shouldn't have and what could i have done what should i have done just doing that a few times and then trying it out going out there and trying it out just next time you go with your friends i'm gonna set myself and see what happens and and then when if something good happens all right that wasn't too bad i get away with that yeah i feel that emotion trickling forward that guilty i'm not gonna pay attention to it because i don't deserve to feel guilty so i acknowledge that i feel it but i'm not gonna let it ruin the positive feeling of asserting myself and getting stuff that i want you start to walk through that and you do it enough and it'll go away the guilt will i think ultimately go away but again some of this is psychological all of it's psychological maybe and maybe you should ask the same question when genus here on thursday frank says you said that in trying to be like patina macArthur you don't make it to general what about lieutenant kaylee in vietnam did he go too far for victory who is lieutenant kaylee i don't know who lieutenant kaylee is so is you know and and look patin and macArthur did not kill gratuitously they were man of principle and understood what self-defense required understood what victory required and pursued it but the mylai massacre yeah i mean that was gratuitous but that's not macArthur or patin that's being gratuitous that's taking your eye off the ball of victory because that kind of gratuitous killing doesn't lead to victory so you know patin and macArthur did not just slaughter as a man they are they know what victory requires they and they know how to achieve it and they go and do it but they're not gonna i mean neither patina macArthur are the kind of people who just shoot people up in a in a village in vietnam so yes lieutenant kaylee he didn't go too far he that's the wrong way to think about it go too far as there's a right goal here and you go too far he went in the completely wrong direction bradley most people aren't altruists but are scared of being a target picoff said lying in order to protect your privacy is moral live for yourself but wear a mask when necessary well i mean lenard would say that lennard picoff would say that lying in order to protect your privacy but you know those kind of circumstances where it's about protecting your privacy protecting your property or protecting this are pretty unusual most of life is not about lying and not about wearing a mask 99% of time you shouldn't wear a mask and you shouldn't lie and most people are altruists even if they don't live it almost everybody out there almost everybody out there holds altruism as the moral ideal and even if they don't live that moral ideal then they suffer the consequence of holding that as a moral ideal they say the consequence is guilt and the consequence are not living the right life that is the fact that you're not an altruist doesn't make you an egos it usually most altruists most people who reject altruism are cynics become cynical but you know morality doesn't you know what picoff was saying is not some kind of sanction to go around deceiving people when you think it's not convenient to tell the truth it is about literally protecting a value from people who have no weight to that value that is the time that it's appropriate to lie when a value is at risk but the better response is typically no response no response i have no comment try not wearing a mask as much as you can all right liam says how far can selfishness really get you in a late stage mixed economy well what alternative is there i mean it's the only thing that can get you anywhere and i think i think this you know i think fall i still see incredibly successful people out there don't use the so-called late stage mixed economy as an excuse not to pursue your values or not to try it's what's this this great shakes be aligned right it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all it's better to try it's better to make the effort it's better to value it's better to pursue to live to challenge to risk to and not succeed than never to have valued at all never to have lived at all life is about value so what option is there to be selfish it's the only way to success and what you could say is well today oh that's tennis and i keep doing that i keep thinking at shakespeare and i keep being corrected thank you um thank you mary benz it's it's a tennis not shakespeare never to have loved it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all so tennis and said that um but it's um god don't don't use i mean again what option is there whatever state the world is in whatever state it's the apocalypse it's a zombie apocalypse you want to be selfish want to pursue your values to whatever extent you can maybe you put a bullet through your head but even then you're doing it because it's a selfish things to do you don't want to suffer through the way life is going but you always want to be selfish selfishness is not something that you turn on and off depending on the state of the world it is the only way to live andrew says thanks for this great show thinking re integrating emotions around selfishness value reason is fundamental over feelings if you feel guilt for being selfish but by reason you should feel proud go with your reason absolutely always go with your reason and acknowledge what's going on which is really really important acknowledge the emotion acknowledge what is happening acknowledge the conflict and over time the conflict will go away and that's why but it's important acknowledge it not to repress it not a suppress it not a barrier recognize it i've got this conflict when i do certain things i feel guilty when i shouldn't i know i shouldn't i know the things that i'm doing are right i've shown by reason every time that happens i'm gonna acknowledge it and still do the right thing all right something Norwegian anyway to get that put a weakened tax advantage as and Norwegian and when are you coming back to Norway let's plan a dinner at a super nice restaurant dinner at a super nice restaurant in Norway sounds amazing i think i've got a list of of restaurants i want to try in Oslo next time i'm there so that is definitely something we'll do although i don't know who you are because of that handle the thing about Norway is that if you move out of Norway you get whatever tax rate is in Norway is in the country you move to you're not like an American where you taxed at American rates no matter what on global income no matter where you live so you have a lot more options than Puerto Rico you have all the options where taxes are low and you know i don't know Cyprus Monte Carlo i don't know where all these places are but there are a lot and there are a lot of places where taxes are really really low and you can live and benefit from those taxes the problem with somebody who has an American passport is they get taxed in America for all their income unless you're Puerto Rican in Puerto Rico you only get taxed by Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico gives you all these benefits so as a Norwegian you've got a wide array of possibilities in terms of where to live and i do think you can get much of the tax benefits in Puerto Rico that Americans do i think so Hoppe Campbell does the good have a tendency to underestimate the capabilities of evil like Hamas on october 7th and the Nazis during the battle of the bulge um no i mean i don't think so i don't think it's a tendency i think i think there is a certain complacency that falls on the good and and it often thinks too positively of evil and therefore doesn't expect it to rear its ugly head as often as it does but i don't think you know is what was complacent before october 7th and the intelligence assessments were based on complacency and and to some extent ignorance but that doesn't always happen it's not a necessity and it's not something that characterizes the good per se i don't know about the Nazis in the battle of the bulge you know did the allies underestimate them i don't know but why didn't they underestimate them in other places so i don't i don't think of it as a rule Bonnie says i've waited years to hear this said in real life yes morality's purpose is one's own life but the standard is the kind of being we are thank you oh i didn't think that that was that original but i'm glad i'm glad you benefited from that james says why is belief in the supernatural the door to altruism i don't think it's the door to altruism i think altruism can predate it but i think that that oh here's a here's a i mean i think the best reason i can give right now is that altruism is such a evil ideology it's so anti-life it's so into a very basic desire to live that you better have a good reason to be an altruist so in a sense to be an altruist you have to invent god who forces you to be one god who then rewards you in an afterlife god you know which is kind of kind of hinting at egoism right talk about long term god who commands you to be it i mean abam is not going to kill his own son unless god commands it jesus is not i mean this is assuming jesus is human jesus is not going to die one of the most excruciating deaths possible to mankind to a human being if not commanded to do so by god not believing that god requires it so altruism is so anti-life that the only way to engage in it in spite of that not the only way but a major way one way in which to convince people to engage in it in spite of that is by convincing them there's a supernatural bradley do you think high male suicide is due to altruistic standards of masculinity um i think i i mean there's something there i think it's definitely altruism um i think high male um suicide has to do with the the lack of purpose and the lack of meaning that young men and indeed middle age men um have they they don't know what the purpose is and that altruism drives they're looking for something outside of themselves as jordan peterson would want them to do and they can't find it and they don't see the point and they haven't been taught to find it in their own values to find it in their own reason to find it in their own life and part of that is i think part of it is masculinity i don't i don't think it's the only thing but part of it is that and i don't know if it's an altruistic attitude towards masculinity but it's it's an it's it's supposed to suppress their masculinity but also not acknowledge that there is such a thing they don't know what it is um so i think it's it's definitely generated by confusion about masculinity but i think the most dominant thing is the lack of purpose which also relates to masculinity that altruism you know instills in people it instills purpose should be outside of you the other but where what why why why why no answer and no alternative given so what's the point i think that's more likely the path to suicide bradley ran's ability to distinguish metaphysical and manmade is powerful in realizing the actual power others have over your life most people overestimated yes absolutely but also most people just get upset about things they have there's nothing they can do about and and yeah i mean i understand that it's it's an obstacle but if there's nothing you can do about it then you just work with that obstacle to move forward you adapt you change in order to deal with it but the metaphysical is that which you have no control over and and some things are manmade and you don't have any control over politics for example so you can't do something to change them but you also have to realize how much can you do and you have to realize that you can't do much and yeah it's good to write a letter to edit it out to argue with the friends me this a periodically or to support a particular candidate if they're good but it's also really really crucial to understand how little influence you have and therefore how you should not pay too much attention and engage too much energy in it because there's only so much you can do and you have to live your life and yes politics has an influence over your life but you have the greater influence over your life Michael have altruists and determinists like sam harris abandoned reason while claiming to be its biggest defenders well i think i think yes i think sam harris has abandoned reason in a number of different fronts i mean sam when asked about the spiritual the the the that of consciousness attainment's all about taking psychedelics i mean that's just not reason that's such a not rational his whole view of determinism so yes i think he's definitely abandoned and yet he can be incredibly rational incredibly reasonable in dealing with many many other topics and i have a lot of respect to sam harris as a consequence topics that a lot of other people cannot or don't seem to be able to jake up what is harder could running the west from christianity to egoism or east from towerism confusionism to egoism i don't know i don't know i i would think i would think it would be harder to convert the towerist confucianists easier to convert the towerist confucianists their errors don't go quite as deep but i might be i might be wrong because there is a certain element of individualism and christianity that that you know the the individual redemption individual relationship with god and things like that that might you might be able to capitalize on i don't know i don't and i don't know enough about eastern religions to be able to tell um but it strikes me the towerism and confucianism are not very deep and emotionally connected and have as much of a kind of philosophical framing that you know not only do you have to deal with christianity but you have to deal with all of secular philosophy since the greeks that today which have reinforced christianity in a secular way and then i don't think you have with towerism and confucianism first of all it's a radio yeah i mean i think i think that's what i have to say frank says your cultural work journalistically and philosophically is not easy so much appreciated pave the way for stronger sense of life is crucial to be communicated paving the way for a stronger sense of life is crucial to be communicated thank you uh frank i really really appreciate the the support that was $50 really really appreciated yeah it's not easy i don't think it is easy but but i enjoy it you know that's important i enjoy it i have fun doing it your all of your appreciation for what i do means a lot to me because i am a teacher at heart so it's not second-handed the value i'm producing is the effect i'm having on you that's the value i'm producing and so you're you're showing me that that that i've achieved to have a impact on you it makes it all worthwhile so thank you friend hopper says thanks for having shows like this they increase my potential to live better and also help my friends with these concepts and ideas i learned from opal and the like and you with integrating it all i appreciate that friend hopper as i said every saturday positive show i'm committed we'll see i mean the challenges that i feel like i'm here's the challenge which i'm interested in what you you guys think of i feel like i'm repeating myself like i say the same thing over and over again but there's great value to repetition great value to repetition when i look at other thinkers and and uh and uh not you know other people who do something similar to what i do they repeat themselves a lot you know every show is very similar to the previous show so i there's value in repetition there's value in you hearing it over and over again so i need to convince myself of that because i feel funny about saying the same thing over and over again but i shouldn't antonio says just a thank you for the work and to troi for his support yes absolutely for his support of these shows this is truly selfish appreciation thank you antonio really really appreciate that thank all of you you know we we blew through a target thank you to all our 50 dollar contributors and thank you for troi um uh who came in with all those australian dollars um thanks guys i will see you all i hope you have a great rest of your weekend i will see you all on monday we will do a news roundup um early and then um on tuesday we'll do two shows thursday we're actually doing three shows because one of them is going to be in hebu and those of you who understand hebu get me three times during that day if you want to um but uh yeah i'll see you all on monday and it is december uh i'll have to say more about december and maybe next saturday show which is a positive show and don't forget don watkins is on a thursday which is us going to be super positive because it's going to be about effective egoism a lot of what we talked about today uh but you get don which is going to be a treat bye everybody i'll see you all monday