 What I want to do now is talk a little bit about Ben Shapiro's latest response to me. So I don't know if you know, but we've been going back and forth, Ben Shapiro and I. He made a comment on Dave Rubin's show that Einranz ethics. So Einranz, the way she deals with relationship among people is garbage. I then did a video critiquing what he said about Einranz ethics. And he has now put out a little, a very short statement, kind of commenting, not really commenting on what I said, but, but, you know, taking the conversation a little bit further, I thought I'd comment on this all with the great anticipation that one day we'll have a sit down to talk about this. So what I want to do is I'm going to share the screen here so that you can see the video. And we're going to play the video. I will probably stop it in, at the relevant places and comment as we go through. But he was Ben Shapiro basically responding to a listener question. Here's subscriber, ask her questions now. Michelle says, hi Ben. I have long been a champion of laissez-faire economics, individualism, and the logic espoused by Einranz. The atheism and rapey love scenes in her work, not so much. Objectivist balking me when I say logic and Christianity are not mutually exclusive, that Atlas shrugged as their Bible and I ran their deity. Am I wrong? If not, is there a way I can better frame this argument? No, I mean, I think that you're not wrong. This is a debate that I'm supposed to have. Well, just, just first, of course, she's wrong. You know, Objectivism and Christianity do not meet, do not fit, do not, are not compatible. Logic, a reason and faith are not compatible. So, but he brushes over this point. It's interesting. He skips, he skips over this point and goes right into the issue that he always seems to want to talk about Einranz, which is the ethics. The ethics really bother him. And, you know, this is what I'm hoping one day we'll have a chance to actually sit down and talk about. But, but yeah, no, they, as I said that the whole question is, you know, is Christianity compatible with Objectivism? And it's not. And he's saying, and he's not clear what he's exactly saying. He's saying she's right, which means it is, but I don't think he thinks that because he rejects the Objectivist ethics and adopts kind of a Judeo-Christian ethics. I don't think, I don't think he's really answering the question she is asking. He is going off on his thing, but here we go. I'm supposed to have, I believe with Yaron Brook at some point. I watched his video responding to me on Objectivism. And what it seems to me is that what Objectivists tend to do is they redefine virtue in Objectivist terms. So, that's right. We redefine virtue in Objectivist terms. And that's exactly what we do. Einranz was not a conventional philosopher, conventional thinker who just accepted the ethical code that existed in the culture around her. She rediscovered, if you will, or she discovered a new moral code. She discovered a new code of virtues and values. So, yes, we are, Objectivism is redefining what virtue means. What virtue means, what we're redefining. We're not accepting the conventional interpretation of virtue. Virtue in Objectivist terms. So, traditional virtue has suggested that, for example, altruism is a virtue, right? Einranz has altruism in personal relationships. It is a sin. It's not a virtue. That's right. Einranz rejects altruism, not just in personal relationship in every aspect of life. She says that altruism is a mistake because selfishness is a virtue as it is in the marketplace, because in the marketplace you have a creative impulse to create. That leads you to transform the world. And then you want to take that creative impulse and you want to trade that for more capacity to fulfill that creative impulse. And that's how trade happens, that's how the world is better. I totally agree with this. So, this is that a Smith argument, right? Self-interest is good in the marketplace. In the marketplace, the make-up makes it red for his own, for his own family, for himself, to build, to make, to produce. And because of trade and because everybody's motivated by the self-interest, that enhances society and it grows the pie. And everything is, everybody is better off. And that's kind of the society is better off because of the self-interest as applied to economic productive activity of the individual. And that's a good thing. So, Shapiro here is channeling kind of 240 years of arguments that the pro-capitalists have made from Adam Smith until Ben Shapiro, with lots of people in between, all making the same moral argument. Self-interest is not good in interpersonal relationship. It's not a virtue. It's not something to be admired really in anything. But it turns out that in economics, in the marketplace, there's a positive result. So, it's good in the marketplace. So, it's evil in other things. It's good in the marketplace. It will take it and capitalism is good, even though the driving force of capitalism, which is self-interest, is tainted. Not a good, not a good defensive capitalism. Not a good defensive capitalism. Not a good defensive capitalism. On a personal level, I've always said that one of the big, one of the funny things about Inran's work, is there never any children in Inran's work? So, one of the, one of the fun parts of discussion when I get to sit down with Ben is to point out that I do have children, that this is not an objective principle, not to have children. Because a lot of people seem to make a big deal out of this. This is something really, really important that there are no children in Fountainhead and there are no children in Al-Shuaq, even though there are a few children in Al-Shuaq, as if this is a major flaw in Inran's philosophy, which is really strange, as if children are what define, what should define our approach to life, what should define our approach to ethics and morality. If you don't have, if you don't deal with the issue of children, you don't deal with morality. Just untrue. It's an old level. I've always said that one of the one of the funny things about Inran's work is there are never any children in Inran's work. So, Yarn Brook would respond to my suggestion that if I were to operate out of selfishness, I would abandon my children by saying, well, no, that would just be you operating out of like your temporary selfishness. So, let me correct him so he's better prepared for the debate, for the discussion. There is no such thing as temporary selfishness, short-term selfishness, momentary selfishness. None of that exists. All there is is the idea of selfishness. All there is is the idea of self-interest. And if you're interested in a in a fuller discussion of this, Rick Salamiere, and I really talked about this, when was it a week ago? I think, yeah, it was a week ago. And you can find it online. No, it was two weeks ago. Sorry, it was two weeks ago. I interviewed Greg and we talked exactly on this. Greg is a philosopher and we talked exactly on this idea of selfishness. And the point is there is no such thing as short-term and long-term self-interest. And then, you know, you have to balance the short-term self-interest versus the long-term self-interest. Or we as objectivists against short-term self-interest were for long-term self-interest. No, we're for self-interest, which is objectively defined. And what is good for you is good for you. Doing things at the short-term that are bad for you long-term, those things are bad for you. There is no you separate from the long-term. There is no interest that is short-term. There is no interest that relates tomorrow, but where you don't care about the consequences a week, two weeks a month from now. So this idea, again, that people keep returning to that there's such a thing as short-term self-interest, a long-term self-interest, and you kind of you're kind of playing off one off the other just wrong. That's work. So Yarn Brook would respond to my suggestion that if I were to operate out of selfishness, I would abandon my children by saying, well, no, that would just be you operating out of like your temporary selfishness. But if you're operating out of your long-term selfishness, you'd realize that it is worthwhile to do this. Except for the fact that what objectivism does in the moral sphere with regard to personal relationships is it removes my ability to judge whether a behavior is good or bad. I can't really judge whether somebody else's behavior is good or bad because selfishness is by nature a subjective phenomenon. Now notice what he's doing here. This is interesting. He's saying that what's important to him here is whether he can judge other people, whether he can judge other people as moral or not. Now that's kind of strange. Why is that important? Why is that crucial? Why is that? I mean, I do think you can judge other people. I think it's hard to judge other people's morality, but I do think you can judge other people. But why is that the essence? It has to be the essence if you're an altruist because altruists are concerned with other people that are concerned about themselves. Their primary concern is looking out into the world and saying goodbye, bad guy, needy, not needy, judging everybody. Now I don't think it's that easy to do even within his context, but what bothers him is objectivism doesn't allow him to do that because objectivism doesn't provide him with commandments that if you violate commandments independent of any context, I can say he's a bad guy. He's a good guy to categorize everybody based on how many commandments they violate. That to me in and of itself is a strange way to approach morality. It's a very second-handed way. It's a very social metaphysics way. It says that the primary purpose of morality is to judge other people. No, the primary purpose of morality is to guide your life, is to give you guidance on how to live successfully, how to out of flourish, how to be a good person, how to be successful in life, in living. And judging other people is a factor in that. It's an important factor in that. It's one of the virtues is justice, which means judging other people. But it's still a secondary. It's only for the purpose of living your own life better. But that whole context, that whole view of morality, that morality is about helping you guide your life, improve your life, make your life better. It gives you the principles. And principle is an important word here because we'll get to that in a second. It gives you the principles by which to live a successful life. That context just eludes Ben and most of Iron Man's critics completely. What it does in the moral sphere with regard to personal relationships is it removes my ability to judge whether a behavior is good or bad. I can't actually judge whether somebody else's behavior is good or bad because selfishness is by nature a subjective phenomenon. Now let's talk about this. Selfishness is by nature a subjective phenomenon. No. Selfishness is not a subjective phenomenon. It is an individual phenomena. It is something that in a sense only I can fully define for myself. But the principles, and this is where it's so crucial, and this is where, as you'll see in the rest of this, he misses, the principles are objectively defined. The idea of the virtue of rationality, the value of reason, the virtue of honesty, the virtue, those are principles that guide our lives, the virtue of integrity, which we'll get to in a minute. Those are principles that guide our life. And if you understand objective morality, when you violate a principle like that, it is self-destructive. It hurts you in the present and the future. There is no way to live a good life by violating the principles of morality. And those are objective. Now, how they get applied in any particular circumstances, I wouldn't call subjective because that means somebody, if they're taking away from because it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, because it's, if it's done rationally, it's done on the basis of reality. It's done on the basis of objective fact, but it's individual. So it's difficult to judge other people's actions because it's hard to tell how rational they have truly been. Judging other people is very, very, very difficult according to objectivism, because whether something is moral or not, to a large extent depends on whether it was rational or not. And that depends on partially the context of knowledge and the thinking on the part of the actor. And we're not always privy to that. So yes, it doesn't give you the simplicity of, of, of religion, right? So listen to, listen to, to, to, to the rest of this, right? If it is by nature, a subjective phenomenon. So I can judge somebody if they're taking away from somebody else, right? If they're, if they're a leech or mooch. He's, he's, he's conflating here subjectivism or with his, he's conflating the idea of being objective with the idea of an external party judging, external party looking at it and being able to judge. This again is very common among religionists. Objectivity is about its correlation with reality, not its correlation with somebody else's understanding. Something is objective, not because I know what you're doing, but whether you are in concordance with reality, with the facts, with reason. So an epistemological point, if you will. There, if they're a leech or a mooch, a moocher under the, the Iran terminology, I can, I can do any of that. But what I cannot do in the, in the personal sphere is blame a husband for leaving his wife and his children because if Now that's right. Because sometimes it's good for everybody if a husband leaves his wife and his children. If, you know, I'm pro divorce. If you can't stand each other and you're fighting all the time and the children are suffering, then you should get a divorce. It's better for everybody. But the idea that the standards should be convention, pure hotel, if this particular divorce was rational or not. And if he can't, therefore it's an act of subjectivity and outside the realm of reality is ridiculous. Some divorces are moral. Some divorces are immoral. Some people get married for stupid reasons. Some people get divorced for stupid reasons. Some people are rational. Some people irrational. Some people are moral. Some people are immoral. But the standard for morality is not an outside observer's ability to tell or not to tell. Personal sphere is blame a husband for leaving his wife and his children because if he made the personal calculation that his happiness would be maximized by leaving his wife and his children, then who am I to judge that? And my answer to that is I can judge that anytime because he just did something wrong. That is wrong. Why did he do something wrong, Ben? By what definition? Where, where does it, what in reality does something wrong? Now it's true that if he truly abandoned his wife and his children, then he did something wrong even by objective standard because he violated the principle of integrity. He committed to something. He has obligations and he's walking away from those obligations to the extent that he is not paying alimony or that he's not fulfilling certain obligations that he is legally bound by, then, you know, he's violating his integrity if he just walked out because to use Ben's example from our previous, from previous video because he saw a hot woman at the bar, then he's being, he's being a women worshipper and he's being a short term and he's being an emotionalist and absolutely I can judge all those things in objectivism. I can't judge him actually leaving his wife, but if I know the reasons he left his wife, if I know what transpired, if I know the process, then of course I can judge him from the outside. Of course you can make an objective judgment about it. So there is objective truth. There is a husband leaving his wife with its moral and there is a husband leaving his wife with immoral. It depends. Now for Ben, it's always immoral because he's an intrinsicist. It says somewhere that I shall not leave your wife and that's it. Why? Because, because it says in the book. He made the personal calculation that his happiness would be maximized by leaving his wife and his children. Then who am I to judge that? Notice also the way he thinks about happiness and the way he thinks about selfishness. It's a calculus. It's constantly adding up things. So there's also a lack of understanding of what happiness really means of happiness being the state of consciousness, this consistent state of consciousness, this state of consciousness that does not accept contradictions, that does not accept violations of the moral code, that does not accept lack of integrity, for example. So it's not that, okay, how many orgasms do I get in this situation? How many orgasms do I get in this situation? Add them up and I go for the one with the greater orgasms and that's maximizing happiness. That's not how happiness works and that's not how the objectivist moral and ethical view works. The whole moral code, the whole ethical view is, here's some principles that if you act based on these principles, principles that have been induced from experience, from reality, from the facts of reality that lead to human success and human happiness. And if you follow these principles, you will be happy, you know, banning accidents and really bad stuff happening too. You will be happy. It's not, at every point in time, I add up all the things that I could be doing over there versus all the things I could be doing and oh, the algorithm, that is an unprincipled subjectivist indeed, concrete bound, perceptual level view of what human happiness is and a proper approach to human happiness. It's not about the calculus. It's about living by a rational moral code, living rationally in pursuit of your happiness, but that means following certain principles. All right. Question that his happiness would be maximized by leaving his wife and his children, then who am I to judge that? And my answer to that is I can judge that at any time because he just did something wrong. That is a wrong that makes the world worse, it makes his family worse off. So the standard is what makes the world worse, what makes his family worse, what's good for him or not is irrelevant. So this is a traditional utilitarian altruistic perspective on ethics and it's not surprising that I don't think he quite gets the objectivist approach and you'll see that in a second because it's so counter, it doesn't fit and you'll see Ben is smart enough to know that, to know that it doesn't quite belong and see what he says. Because he made a commitment and now he violated that commitment. And so the objectivist would say, well, what does the commitment mean? Why should he fulfill his commitment? Because in the future maybe he has an interest in doing so. You see, he can't make sense of that because he can't make sense of principles because he can't accept kind of principles based on reason. The only principles in quotes, he accepts commandments or utilitarian precepts. Future maybe he has an interest in doing so. The problem is there's a line and I'd be interested to discuss this with you actually. Well, that's what's interesting, right? He realizes he's not getting something. He's honest enough and I think smart enough to realize something's off here. So he's interested in talking to me about it, which I'm very hopeful about, not in terms of my ability to convince Ben Shapiro, I'm not going to convince Ben, but just in terms of having an intelligent conversation because I think we can, I hope we can, and I think it'll be fun. And I'm looking forward to the opportunity to do that. A line in objectivism that seems to fall quickly into subjectivism when it comes to your personal attitude toward those that you care for and your personal activity and moral behavior. No, I mean, none of that is true. It doesn't fall into subjectivism. People fall into subjectivism, but the objectivism morality is about being objective. It's about being rational. An example of this, right? She ditched her husband. She didn't ditch her husband. She stayed with her husband. Her lover who was 30 years younger than she was ditched his wife. He didn't ditch his wife. He stayed with his wife. He ditched everybody afterwards, but he didn't. They got together. Dagny in Atlas Shrugged is hopping from bed to bed now. Dagny is hopping from bed to bed, guys. She sleeps with three men, three men, all giants, all, whoa, right? I mean, amazing, three men. And he's making out to be a slut, right? I mean, he's shocked by this. And he says, or listen to what he says here, right at the end. I mean, Dagny sleeps around, really? Listen to this. Younger than she was ditched his wife. They got together. Dagny in Atlas Shrugged is hopping from bed to bed, and everybody's just sort of okay with it, right? All of her former lovers are totally fine with this. This is a giant misread of how human beings actually operate in the real world. Time for a mailbag. So. No, man. Unfortunately, it's not a giant misreading of how human beings behave in the real world. It is incompatible, that is true, with your perspective on morality, your perspective on sex. There are lots of adults out there who are friends with former lovers of their significant others. I mean, the idea that we all hate other people who slept with our spouses, I mean, that is bizarre. And that is a sign of dramatically low self-esteem. And Ben, and we've seen this, I've seen this in other stuff that you've read, has a very, very, very bad, I think, view of sex and a very, very bad view of marriage, and what the two entail. I mean, I'm a strong believer that one shouldn't get married unless one has sex before marriage. So you know what you're getting into, that sex is a wonderful thing that should be experienced, it should be experienced more than with one person if the opportunity arises and if you share values with more than one person. I mean, I'm full monogamy, but I don't believe that you have to pick one person, and that's it for your whole life. And you know that whenever you start dating at 17 or 18. You should try stuff out. You should, I won't say sleep around, but you should have sex. You should have sex.