 Wow, those are some phenomenal stories really inspiring This is an amazing day. So thank you all for being here and thank you for the organizers You know when they they called me up a few weeks ago or a few months ago and said hey, do you want to give an Edison talk I? Said sure sounds like fun. What's the topic and? They said it's departure. I Said what? Departure that's a topic and I started thinking about it and You know I started out by thinking this is the nothing space right? There's nothing in front of you That's a good beginning as we learned earlier. I Don't know anything about departure But then I started thinking you know I Depart almost every week to do my job to go somewhere in the world To talk to debate to discuss ideas. How did I get to this place? I departed from a career that everybody expected me to have that the world you know Imagine that I would have them my parents expected me to live up to and went on a path that is Completely different and by the way a great embarrassment to my parents If you've read Atlas Shrugged, you know why I left my country of origin. I was born in Israel I left my culture. I left my family. I've departed many many times during my life departure is a Part of my life But when did it all start? What is the origin of all these departures? There's a moment in time for all of us and you know here I'm talking primarily to the students here. There's a moment in time sometime between I don't know the ages of 14 and the ages of 25 Where those hormones kick in and suddenly the world opens up and Yes, there are all kinds of expectations from other people There are all kinds of demands that our culture has on us that our parents have on us that our family Everybody expects that our friends, you know, whether it's to join a gang do drugs be in a band Be an engineer be a doctor or lawyer as as as my parents expected for me But suddenly those hormones kick in and our minds open up and there's an incredible opportunity That we face as young people It's to shape our own lives It's to make decisions for ourselves. It's to truly become independent We leave the home and there's a certain level of independence involved in that You have to be financially independent. You have to start, you know making your own food and Cleaning your own clothes and taking care of yourself in a thousand different ways But there's a much more fundamental Issue at stake during these years when we're maturing into adulthood And that is the independence of mind Discovering our own mind Discovering who we are Discovering the ideas that are right for us discovering what we believe the truth to be And that might be what our parents have always told us It might be what the preachers have taught us Depending on what really I find it interesting that people who are born into a particular religion To the dying day believe that that is the true religion, right? The only reason they believe it's a true religion is because they were born into it If you're born into a different one you believe just as Between the age of 15 or 25, this is the period we're gonna challenge all that now Why do I cap it at 25 because the fact is that most of the adults here who are over 25 30 Don't change their mind about anything important ever Just the fact there's a certain calcification that happens in the mind particularly about fundamental questions But really important to issues We grow up with certain ideas Then there's a window where we can challenge them where we can become who we really are Well, we can make choices that are fresh that and you that are original to us that are independent And then whatever those choices are whether we chose to choose or chose just to continue on the path that our parents set for us That's what gets locked in for most of us not for everybody for the rest of our lives So this period is really really important Now for me, you know when I was growing up, I grew up in Israel and Israel I Those teen years were years were in the 70s and if you win Israel in the 70s Everybody pretty much had the same mindset You were an adamant collectivist Being an Israeli Being part of the Jewish tribe was everything was the most important thing in the world We grew up with songs describing the sacrifice of Soldiers and other Jews to make our lives possible life was about living for the tribe life was about living Sacrificing for the collective and I believed it. I bought into it a hundred percent. That was me You were brought up politically with socialism everybody was a socialist you didn't know anything else This was the reality So your life belonged to the group and the group got to make decisions which basically is socialism and I defend Who was spouting these kind of capitalist ideas? And I said to him one day. I said, what is this nonsense? That you're talking about what do you get this BS right and he handed me a copy of Atlas shrug I know they're adults in the audience and are freaking out because most of you probably hate Atlas shrugged Whether you've read it or not you probably hate Atlas shrug Right bit this book literally changed my life It taught me that my life does not belong to the group That my life is not to be sacrificed for the tribe That the tribe not is not the entity and replace tribe with your community with your country with your group any group that you want, right? Tribe is kind of deeply ingrained in us because we all kind of started a long time ago in tribes It taught me that my life was mine It was mine to be happy to pursue values to pursue my success to live my life as icy fit To think for myself not to accept necessarily what my parents when my culture what my political leaders when my teachers were telling me Not to reject it either But to think about it to evaluate it to examine it to use My mind to figure stuff out It taught me the value of using your mind Now why is it important? Why is the human mind so important? You know If you think about human beings all the people in this auditorium, it's hard for me to see you guys But I you know you're pretty normal right as a biological species We are pretty pathetic and if you don't believe me just look at your neighbor We're weak We're slow We have no claws We have no fangs, you know you try running down a bison and biting into it You try going up against a sabre to tiger We lose in the biological game out there We lose over and over and over again and yet we haven't lost here. We are we're incredibly successful Why is that? It's not because we have thumbs as some anthropologists would suggest It's because we have brains It's because we have reason it's because we have our mind Every value that we have is a consequence of somebody thinking Usually somebody thinking out of the box Somebody innovating somebody discovering something somebody using his reason using his mind and usually If it was a real revolutionary idea, what did the culture around him do to him? Burn him at the stake crucify him putting him at a house arrest The historical examples are numerous the real breakthroughs are not well tolerated You know, none of us here have the gene to make clothes Somebody had to figure that out and it's not easy you try cutting up an animal and turning it into Clothing or taking cotton and turning it into a jacket None of you know how to do this. I can guarantee that But some genius some were thousands of years ago figured it out Agriculture you guys have the gene for agriculture. They might be some farmers here but even then it's not a gene Somebody figured out that seed that dropped and grew into a shrub somebody figured out that the seed Was the cause of the plant and the watering the seed produced it that was the Einstein of his day probably crucified for that discovery and Then somebody had to take that discovery and turn it into an industry called agriculture Actually do the work that was the Bill Gates or Steve Jobs of his day The entrepreneur who turned it into profit-seeking and he was probably vilified forever for being greedy and thinking only of himself As we do to most of our very successful entrepreneurs. Okay. Okay successful entrepreneurs. We tolerate It's the real successful ones. We don't like but all of that all of that is a Consequence of the use of your mind of the use of reason That is our unique means of Surviving of thriving of achieving happiness of achieving success and what it means to be independent Really independent it means to use your mind now you can come to the same conclusions that your parents had You can decide that particular ideas are right and wrong and they might be They might conform to what's around you and they might not But you have to make that decision based on your reason based on your capacity to think It is your mind That is gonna guide your life for the rest of your life Use it use it. Well use it now and use these years Where there's this opening Where you're open to the world To challenge yourself We're all born in a particular culture a particular time with particular. I don't know let's say music. I Was born in the 70s best popular music ever Right rock and roll nothing better than that. Right. We all think that when we grew up we had the best music But that's just the music we grew up with There's music that goes back hundreds of years There's great music that has that comes from different cultures Go out and experience it live it Figure out what you like what you love. What's really good for you Make your life mission at 16 at 17 at 20 Make your life mission to discover the things that you are most passionate about And don't do it through whim. Don't do it through emotion Don't do it because other people tell it do it by using your mind by using your brain by using reason by using thinking Depart from the norm be unconventional but not unconventional in the sense of rejecting for the sake of rejecting But unconventional because you want to understand you want to figure out you want to discover the truth The truth that will lead you to the best life that you can lead for yourself Because that's at the end of the day What I discovered for my in man and what led to all my departures my departure from country from family you know and from Korea is That my life is mine Happiness is the goal. I have a great tool in my mind each one of us has a great tool to find our happiness to be successful to pursue life and It's that pursuit of life that pursuit of happiness Which is what? We are all about what we should be all about It's not about doing what other people want you to do. It's not about playing by the rules. It's not about Following your friends. It's about your life Over a lifespan and it's hard, you know, I'd like to tell people, you know, I'm an advocate for a morality of self-interest I know that sounds harsh right a morality of self-interest But what does that mean? Being self-interested is hard work because it means thinking figuring out Dedicating your mind to figuring out what is really good for me for the rest of my life and The best time to start thinking about that is now and the best time during your life to start thinking about that is When you're young When you've got the energy when the world is opening up Go embrace it go have fun Be happy Pursue reason. Thank you all