 We're going to delete the old one, let's just do this, and we're going to go to the other website just to make sure it's all working. Apologize for all the technical nonsense, but this is what happens when you don't do the show a few weeks, and you're kind of rusty, and there it is, it's working, it's live, nobody's watching on our Facebook live, but I'm sure they'll be joining us soon as this gets into their stream. Alright, let me start with Ethan's question and then we've got, I see we've already got one caller with the question and we'll go to that. So here's Ethan, and think about how you would answer this, how you would answer this if you had to answer it. Okay, so Ethan's obviously a student, he's taking a philosophy class. The professor's a socialist and a pro altruist, and this is a comment about altruism that Ethan made in his class. So this is Ethan speaking, and he's talking about some articles they've read about altruism, and in these articles, this is Ethan, Langnes, which I guess is the author, insisted altruism is the representation of the best part of human nature, pretty typical. And that egoism is in fact the worst part of human nature. This idea falls flat very quickly, however, is the ability to be altruistic declines exponentially as one's apparent wealth declines. A genuine and complete altruist, by definition, will have no products to share, as they have shared them all already. Without egoism, production is null, and thus once all goods have been given away in the name of altruism, no new goods will come into the altruist possession. So we've given them all away, what now? Therefore, it is necessary for even the most genuine altruist to undertake some egoism if they desire to continue being altruistic. In response, so that's what Ethan wrote, so I want you to think about, what do you think about what he said? Does this make sense? So let me repeat kind of a section of it. A genuine and complete altruist, by definition, will have no products to share, as they have shared them all already. Without egoism, production is null, and thus once all goods have been given away in the name of altruism, we distributed them all, no new goods will come into the altruist possession. Therefore, it is necessary for even the most genuine altruist to undertake some egoism. Now, in response to this comment that Ethan made, the professor commented, I'm not sure this follows. Why can't an altruist be motivated to produce for others? Therefore, he would be productive, he would produce, he would create, he would work, he'd make money or make budgets or whatever he made, create some food in order to distribute it to those in need. So Ethan goes on to say, I'm hoping you are another more studied objectivist than I can respond to this question, as I have thus been unable to respond to it, even within my own mind. I'm readily available to provide more context, and of all three essays ready to share. I think we've got enough there. What do you guys think? What do you guys think? So I'm curious. I'm curious what you guys would say to this. So we're 347-324-3075. So the guy who called before I even asked the question, I'm putting you on longer hold because you're obviously asking a new question. But if anybody wants to comment on Ethan, if anybody wants to comment on this idea that how can you be, what would happen in a world if everybody was altruistic? Right? How would there be more production? Or would everybody really die? Ethan suggests everybody would ultimately just die because there would be any more produced in order to, and the professor is saying, but wait a minute. You would produce enough to keep yourself alive so that you could produce more to share with other people. Right? Why is the professor wrong? Why couldn't that world work? Now, there's a question of what kind of world that would even be if even he is right. And whether you can get innovation and growth and production at the kind of a stand of living and the quality that we get today. If even if you, you know, assumed the professor's right, but is the professor right? Does this make any sense? Oh, I think hopefully this caller is calling because he has an answer. Hi, you're new on Book Show. Who's this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Can you hear perfectly? Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to switch again. Hey, Mark. How's it going? Hey, good. And I think there are two levels where the professor's wrong. First of all, even if altruism could work, there's no reason to act that way. But probably the more relevant problem is that if everybody is an altruist, then you're supposed to sacrifice your own values for other people. But if those other people are also altruists, then they need to sacrifice their values for other people still. And in a whole, just a group of altruists, there's no one to actually have values to direct people's efforts. So a whole community of altruists needs someone outside of the circle to actually have values that we can all sacrifice to them. Yeah. So I think, I think that's right. So, you know, let's put aside the first, your first point about, there's no reason to be an altruist because that's, that's too, you know, of course, that's the fundamental issue. But let's, let's accept the professor's premise and let's say everybody's an altruist. And so you're born and your job in life is to sacrifice for others, sacrifice for others to do what, you know, what do they need? They need food in order to live. They need food. So you should produce food and give it, and give it to them. Right. But if they have, if they have that food and then somebody else, they need to sacrifice any, certainly any excess beyond what keeps them alive. Okay, staying alive. And it's not really a value anymore, right? Why staying alive a value for an altruist? It's other people's lives that is a value. You really get this absurd situation where you're staying alive just to know to keep other people staying alive and they're staying alive just to keep other people staying alive. But where does this all end? There's no end and you, and you captured it right. There are no values here. Even your own life can't be a value. It's other people's value. Other people's lives are value to you, but their lives are not a value to themselves. So they should really turn you down when you give them help. They should really turn you down when you give them stuff. Yeah. And I think somewhere in golf feasts is probably a really good line about why is this, I haven't got a paraphrase. Why is a value good when I give it away, but not good when someone gives it to me or something like that? Well, but that's, that's, yes. The question is the question of why is a fundamental question and how, you know, how Iron Man kind of puts the dent into altruism. All you have to do is ask that question of why? Why is somebody else's life important in my not? Why somebody else's happiness in my not? Why is a value good when I handed it to somebody else, but not good in my own hands? All of that is how you, you have to ask the why and the, and you have to ask the why partially because the response from other people is they don't know. They have no response because God said so because the professor said so because the dictator said so because somebody said so. There's no, in reason, there's no answer to the question why, right? If a value is a value, then why isn't a value to you and why don't you get to keep it? Why is it, why is it an obligation, a necessity, an requirement for you to hand it over, right? So yes, I think what, yeah, go ahead. Oh yeah, and also if you're also, if everybody's supposed to be an altruist and you're giving, you're sacrificing yourself for other people's values, those people in accepting the values, they're actually bad in the altruist morality. Yes. You end up, it's the good people sacrificing for the bad people within that system. Yes. I mean, there's no way to be good in this sense. And to some extent, since there's always need in the world, particularly in a, in a society like this where there's, there's real poverty and, and, you know, we can get to it. We can get to what it means to have what it will get to what it means for production and what it means for innovation and what it means to success in a minute. But just at that very basic level, there's always somebody out there who's going to die unless you give them the food necessary for your own existence. And you can't eat the food because that would be selfish of you. You need to give it to him. But if you give it to him, he can't take it and eat the food because that would be selfish of him. He wants you to eat the food because he has to sacrifice for your sake. So it's a competition of who can die for whom fastest. And this is what makes altruism such a utter complete absurdity. Right. But it's, it's, it's exactly that at the end of the day, they has to be, you have to be willing to value your life somewhat above somebody else's life in order to produce the food to feed yourself or to accept the help of somebody else who's giving you food in order for you to live. Otherwise, you would just pass it on and everybody would die. So it's logically, it is a complete and utter mess. It's a complete and utter disaster. And the professor's absolutely wrong. And Ethan's absolutely right. Ethan just has to draw it out more in terms of everybody's an altruist. He doesn't make that. He doesn't, I think, make the case enough that everybody's an altruist. But even if it's just you, who's the altruist, right? Let's say you're the only one who's an altruist. Well, there's got to be somebody out there who's starving. There certainly is in Africa. Lots of people who starving, who needs the food that, that, that you have needs the stuff that you have in order to survive. It's selfish of you not to provide it to that person. Now the altruist, the altruist would say by staying alive so that you can produce more, you're going to help more people stay alive, right? Which is, right, a reach. At the moment, there is somebody out there who is starving and you could save. And by not saving them, you're being selfish. You're valuing your own life above this. And there is somebody in Africa right now. I always tell people, you really want to be altruistic even today, write a check, right? You know, everything you want to, to, to, to, you know, to Africa, the kids dying there, literally dying by you not writing a check. By the logic of altruism, you are killing those kids. All right. Thanks, Mark. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. We've got another caller. Hi. You're on the book show. Who's this? Oh, hi. Am I on the air? Yes, you are. Hello. You are there. Hello. So, um, well, um, I got three related points, um, on this. Go ahead. So my first, yeah, sure. So my first point would be that, that, um, values, um, are exist in the first place or at least we, um, the whole idea of values is to choose between alternatives. And so, um, that's the starting point, right? And then, then, um, you have to see that there's, okay, when you're an altruist, there's many different people with many different values. You have to choose between them. And, and obviously there'll be some that they'll be some that contradict each other. Like, for example, Mother Teresa is considered like the greatest altruist. Yep. Like, you know, there's the need of the kids and then maybe there's some, I don't know, this was the most opposite example I could think of, which is like, maybe someone who's like a, who's like a capitalist or something and he wants them to be self made. So he says that, okay, no, don't give them charity. You know, um, teach them to be self made. I don't know, something like that. Just too opposite. If you can think of it like that. Yeah. And there's no, there's no basis on which to choose between them other than your own sacrifice other than, you know, your loss. That's, that's the only standard. Yes. And there's two more related points. Yeah. The second one would be that that person might be a mystic. So I don't know if you've heard of some religions like James, for example, who want to die and like start to death instead of living and, you know, the thing, oh, you'll produce because you're an altruist and you want to help people live their life. But what if those people want to die, for example, like they're mystics. And then my third point, I'm not sure I get that one. So, so you can't help them because they want to die. So helping them would actually. Yeah, okay. Would actually not help them. Yeah. And then my third point, which is related would be that what is more altruist to do, like, what if they have a certain value, but you think a certain value would be better for them? How could you judge that that would be better for them? And should you influence them to go in a certain direction so that their life is better? And according to who's standards and by what values and by what standard of judgment, but if you But if they're accepting, if they're accepting your hope in order to have a better life, then they are now being altruistic, right? Yes. But you want to help them have a better life, right? But then by what standard of values, you judge that better life. Absolutely. Absolutely. There is no, I mean, we'll talk about the altruism ultimately has no standard of value. It has no set of values. I'll know virtues really in altruism. There is nothing to be gained. Second hand objective values, right? Yep. Yep. Yep. All right, great. Well, there are no objective values. And we'll get to that that the whole issue of values and virtues kind of falls apart under altruism, because there's no standard of value. There's there's no, it's other people's happiness, which you have no control over, that you can't actually seek. You can't actually attain. And if they're altruists, then they don't want to attain any of that. So it's this perpetual, perpetual rejection of any kind of value, and therefore it negates any possible virtues, because the virtues are the other actions that you take in order to attain a value. So it really is the only real value in a sense, in a sense of value that you are seeking as an altruist is to lose its suffering, its, you know, net loss. And this is partially what makes production so impossible when people are committed altruists. It's because the production has no benefit. It has no value. There's nothing, there's not, there's no standard by which it becomes. What's that? Say that again. Someone might say don't. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. There's no objective value in production. Exactly. And if you want to go by the greatest number or something, how do you decide that greatest number is a good, good standard of value or judgment? Yeah, so there's no standard by which who you should sacrifice to the greatest number, this group, that group, which group exactly, as you said in the beginning, the groups might have competing, competing needs that you should sacrifice towards it. It's a complete and utter mess as a moral code. More like demands because needs is still kind of like a factual thing. So you can judge that objectively, but you're rejecting any objective standard. Well, not really, because, because needs are not really objective. I mean, what do you actually need? I mean beyond maybe food and water and a anything above and beyond that is is. Yeah, or even do I need a car? Do I need a house? Do I need these things? What is need in the con in that context if life is not the standard? What is need? Great. Thanks. Thanks for calling. We've got, whoops, I catch you off there. Sorry. We got one of the caller. Hi, you're on the Iran book show. Who's this? Hi, this is Al from Springfield, Illinois. Hey, Al. How's it going? It's going good. Good. I think one of the biggest problems is that people use these concepts without really understanding the definition of the concept, because most people seem to think the alphabets just means being nice to other people or egalitarian just about three people equally or whatever. But the truth is, you know, they don't take the time to look at the whole concept. They, you know, like I've already said, everybody has a philosophy, but some hold it implicitly whereas hold it explicitly. You know, these people don't take the time to actually study the concept and hold these ideas explicitly. So they're fooled into thinking that these are actually good things that they're not. Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. And I'm going to get to the idea of are there any altruists? And can you be an altruist? And in the culture today are people who claim to be altruists? Are they altruists in the sense in which Iron Man meant it? Or in the sense in which the altruists mean it, in the sense of which Augustine Comte and other philosophies have described altruism as the real sacrifice of self to others is where the purpose of life is other people's wellbeing. Is that something people take seriously? Is that popular people live by? And if they don't live by it consistently, which they don't, because many of them are doing quite well, what does that mean? And how do you understand the world around us? How do we understand how altruism functions in the world around us? If people are not Mother Teresa, and almost nobody's Mother Teresa, how many Mother Teresa's are they in the world? So I think this raises a lot of questions, both about if you are an altruist and altruism's logical conclusion. But more interesting I think in the end is, well, what about the fact that so many people claim to be altruists and yet they're productive and they create stuff and they produce and they live and they seem to do okay? How do they live that contradiction? All right. I can hear you've got another radio show or television show in the background. So let me go on. We've got one other caller. And how are you on the Iran Book Show? Who's this? There's a mark on the put off. Hey, Mark. How's it going? Hey, not bad. How are you? Good. Good. So why can't everyone, why can't you be an altruist and produce a statement? It reminds me of a popular, just whenever somebody says, well, socialism would be great if it were practical. And when everything's automated, we'll all be socialist because we don't need to produce. But until then we need capitalism. And that, I think, ignores where values come from. I mean, it's no coincidence that the Middle Ages were a period of poverty and the industrial revolution created prosperity and creative value. And I think what it is, it's just envy. It's just a denial of egoism. It's to try and rip away pride from producers. Yeah, no, I think the motivation, I think you're absolutely right. I think it's a hatred of the good for being the good. It's not wanting individuals to thrive partially because religion and philosophers and authoritarians want to control people. And proud people with self-esteem who can produce, who can, who value, who attain values are very difficult to control. And so you need, in order to control people, you need to inculcate a morality of sacrifice, you need to inculcate collectivism. And the best way to get collectivism is through altruism. So you need that kind of frame of mind, you need people not to have pride, not to have self-esteem, so you can control them. And religion does this effectively, right? Religion is the ultimate in doing this. So, yeah, I mean, absolutely right. I mean, and we'll get, I'll talk in a minute about the source of values and why people produce and how could you produce if you didn't value your own life? How could you innovate if you didn't value your own life? How could you use your mind? What would your mind go to? How would you think? So, yeah, I think it's impossible to do because of our nature, because of the nature of values, because value is something one acts to gain or keep. Why wouldn't one want to act to gain or keep anything? If you didn't matter, if all that mattered was them, there'd be no motivation, there'd be nothing to drive you, there'd be no, psychologically, you would be dead. If you took altruism seriously, psychologically, why would you get up from bed in the morning? What would be the motivating factor to help other people? But why do you want to help other people? If that makes you feel good, that's selfish, that's not good. So what would drive you psychologically to help other people? I think nothing. I think it would be, it's a philosophy, it's a morality that drives passivity because it rejects individual values. And what happens is people become automatons who just produce enough food in order to consume, they live a miserable, pathetic, sad life, and that's it. And that's the life they live, and that's what you see under socialism, that's what you see under authoritarianism, that's what you see in the dark ages. You see people just grinding away at living because they've been taught that they, as an individual, morally have no purpose, they have no value. Life is truly meaningless because the only meaning life has is other people and it's just not motivating. You have to care about yourself even to care about other people. If I want to help other people and there's genuine benevolence to help other people, I first have to care about myself because I'm going to get pleasure out of other people, I'm going to get value out of other people, but that's way too selfish for a true altruist. That makes sense? Yeah, I mean, I just, I mean, I think, you know, you're not consciously doing it, but every day that you live, you're choosing life or death. Yes, yes. And egoists choose his life consistently. Yes, and what happens with altruists is they choose life implicitly, they never make it explicit, and they rationalize their altruism. The altruism is lip service. It causes them to feel guilty. They never happy, they never fully proud. They don't live the best life that they can live, but every day to some extent in certain realms of their life, they are choosing egoism without even knowing it. And they're choosing life. And without that, the world would collapse completely. So I agree completely. Great. Thanks for the call. Wow. You know, hey, you're new on Brookshow. Who's this? Hey, Jennifer. How's it going? Go ahead. Go ahead. I'm good. I'm good. I'm surprised how many people are calling. I should ask more questions during the show. I mean, you know, that way more people will call. It's pretty cool. Yeah, this is a lot today. Yeah. I was thinking about something a little different. I was thinking about competition and how it motivates people to be productive. But I was thinking if you're inspired by someone else's success, that that could be healthy. But if you're motivated by just trying to be better than other people or trying to beat them, that that would be more of a motivation toward what other people are doing and not really your own motivation. That wouldn't be so healthy. And that's sort of a form of, you know, being other centered instead of yourself. That wouldn't be. I think that's right. Although I think there's some. I think there's some, some place for having a competitive spirit. So think about sports. You know, you've got to want to beat the other guy. You want, you have to want to be better than the other guy. You want to be the best that you can be. But there's just another additional kind of adrenaline kick by being better than anybody else in the world or by being better than in particular at the top level of athletics. But even on the basketball court, you see people who really get into the basketball, really get into whatever sport they're playing. And they're motivated partially by, by being better, you know, by beating somebody else. So I think there is something in us that is there is a competitive spirit. It's healthy when controlled and when, you know, when it's, it's focused on the right things, sports, for example. But even in business, business, I think there's a certain healthy competition, a healthy sense of, wow, that guy's doing a great job. I really admire that. I want to, I want to even be better than that. How can I, how can I improve on what they're doing? How can it be better than them? Yes, partially because I want to be the best that I can be, but also partially because I'm motivated by, by, by this setting a new standard. It's not that I, I want to beat them because I resent them. I want to beat them because I admire them. I want to beat them because they've said a new standard for me to excel at what I'm doing. Right. So I wouldn't say that everybody who has a competitive spirit is second handed. Now, if your total focus is, I just want to be better than everybody else. Well, I want to be better than that person. Not in a sense, I want to be better because I want to be the best that I can be. But in a sense that I just want, I resent anybody else being better than me. If it's driven through resentment, then it's bad and it's negative and it will destroy you. If it's driven because of love and because of ambition and because of wanting to be the best that you can be, then I think competition is very healthy and very pro-life and positive. Yeah, that's what I was talking about. Trying to figure out the distinction between the two things. Yeah. And sometimes when you look at people, it's hard to tell. But I think it really is this, I know people who just resent that their people are better than them. That's not healthy. Yeah, they're always comparing themselves to everybody else all the time is not a good idea. No, but I know people who look at somebody else and say, wow, okay, I can do better. I can do even better than that. You know, they've just challenged me. They've just challenged me. They throw down a gun. And that's fun. And that's exciting to be challenged in that way. And when you're really good at something to see somebody who's better at it than you are, you can learn from them and you can push yourself by trying to be better than them. It helps you excel yourself. So it's so it's motivating. Good. Good. All right. Thank you. Thanks, Jennifer. Okay. So, all right, I think, I think we've gone down the whole list of colors. And we'll get to colors with new topics in a few minutes. So let's, let's kind of step back. Right. So there were two, I think really two questions here that that I think are interesting and worth discussing that we've talked about and but but I think with discussing a little further. One is, if everybody's an altruist, is that sustainable? And I think the answer to that is, no, it's not. That is death and destruction. It's death and destruction for two reasons. One is this idea that nobody is allowed to be the beneficiary of anybody else sacrificed because that would be selfish of them. And, and therefore there's this, there's this race to die. There's this race to negate oneself because viewing oneself as a value is selfish. So why would one view oneself as a value? So it's everybody's an altruist. It's just a committed altruist taking it seriously and completely 100% devoted to it. Now, psychologically, I don't know if that's really possible because that would require people to in a sense accept death in a way that I think is very difficult for human beings to accept. I don't think you could have a culture where everybody is an altruist. I think people at the very minimal are committed to their own lives and sustain their own lives. And they go through the motions in authoritarian countries during the dark ages of places like that of caring for other people and they accept in some way that stuff is taken from them and given to other people or that they have to give it to other people, but they are still trying to stay alive. And in that sense, there's still that core egos and because psychologically, I think the idea of accepting one's own death consciously. It's just too much. We're alive. We're alive. We're a living being. And this is why I think when somebody like James Taggart in Atlas Shrug realizes that what he really worships is death. What he really wants is destruction and death. He can't live with himself anymore. He basically goes crazy because I think just psychologically, we can't consciously hold that. Now, obviously it's possible because people commit suicide, but a whole culture that commits suicide. You get that, right? You get the cults that commit suicide because that at the end is all that's left. If there is no value in your own life, if everything is sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, well, the ultimate sacrifice is death. And therefore you're quite willing to drink the poison or to cut your throat or whatever it is that the cults, suicide cults do and wipe themselves out completely. And that's the ultimate. That's what altruism ultimately leads. But then there's what is an altruistic person do in a world that's not necessarily altruistic. Now, you know, then you become a Mother Teresa. But notice that there are not a lot of Mother Teresa's in the world. Because again, it's unbelievably hard to be on the Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa was miserable, horribly, horribly, horribly miserable. She is the rare specimen that actually worked hard at her sacrifice. She worked hard to keep people alive, to prevent them from dying, to give them what they needed. And she worked hard at being miserable and at sacrificing and at not valuing anything for herself and staying alive just enough so she could help other people. She could help them stay alive. And as a consequence, she was horribly, pathetically torn and distressed and suffering throughout her life. And you read her journals and that's what you get. You get a sense of the suffering of this misery of this, you know, she really, this is horrible. And it's such an awful existence that I don't think people can sustain it for very long. People really are committed so supposedly to altruism, can't sustain it. And this is what makes Mother Teresa unique, uniquely evil, you would say, uniquely bad, but unique in that she could sustain it. She sustained this state of misery for her whole life. And that makes her very different. You know, a lot of people go out there and help the poor and, you know, they join, I don't know, doctors without borders or something and they go and they do this for two to three years and it's kind of cool and sexy and they have some fun. And they think, you know, they're being good altruists and then and then they come back and they they have a normal life and a normal career and they go back to and, you know, but they can't sustain it. They can't sustain with Mother Teresa sustained for so long. And Mother Teresa took it so seriously that she would not let the people she helped become too successful. So she didn't want them to get an education. She didn't want them to go and start a business to get a job. She didn't help them flourish in life. Her whole point was to just prevent them from dying. They still had to suffer because, you know, the Michelin era, the earth and suffering is a virtue and that's good. And if they were happy, then they would be egoistic and they would be damned to hell. So their suffering is what guaranteed that they would go to heaven. I mean, think about how sick all this is, right? This is just mind boggling. Do we even have to talk about this? But you know, this is why there's so few Mother Teresa's because it's so provoked. It's so sick. It's so distorted, right? That to sustain it constantly, consistently is just so anti-life, so anti-action, so anti-motivation, so anti-psychology that it's almost impossible to actually do. Life, somebody on the Facebook live says, life is a necessary evil. Imagine holding that, right? I mean, I'd rather commit suicide. I would commit suicide if that was where it held, if that's psychologically the best they could come up with. And it takes a particular mind, a particularly, I think, perverse mind to actually hold that. I have to live as a necessary evil so I can serve these other people and they have to be miserable their whole lives so that they don't somehow slip into egoism and they don't enjoy themselves too much because that'll doom them because then they'll go to hell. Happiness leads to hell. That's what altruism believes, whether they believe in an afterlife or not. So to be consistently that is just, it's almost impossible. And to a large extent is impossible and it requires a unique person like Mother Teresa and she is unique in that sense. There are not a lot of people like her because it's ridiculously sick and hard and perverse. And this is why Mother Teresa is not just an example of somebody who did something we don't like, Mother Teresa is an example of something really, really, really bad. Something that we don't condone at all that is not acceptable. This is evil. This negation of your own life. Now, alright, so that's kind of the Mother Teresa model. I'm going to commit and really do it and really live for the people. And some people pretend that they do that for a period of life and they go and have an adventure. It was, it had elements of a self fulfillment. It had elements of pleasure. It had elements that one could associate with selfish behavior. Even if it wasn't fully rationally long term selfish, then if it was truly rationally self interested, they would have never gone to Africa. They would have figured out that this pretense that altruism, this pretense of helping people was not necessary. They didn't need it. It didn't support their life long term. It really wasn't a value. So what do we do? And I think this is much more interesting than the case of the, if you will, the ultimate altruist, right? The consistent altruist, because I think that's very rare. And you know, one of the reasons in our culture today, altruism is not used as a total commitment to other people. To servicing other people, to benefiting other people, a total negation of self. One of the reasons that is not how people view altruism, because when you ask people, what's altruism? They say, oh, it's helping people. It's helping other people. Now that's not what the term means. And it's not even how they hold the term, right? But they can't hold the term in this consistent way because then they would fully realize how immoral by their own standard they are. So they have to hold the term as some watered down version of Augustine Comte's original idea. Which is, you know, you know, even a manual content, I think, said that to the extent that you consider the pleasure you will get from helping somebody else. To that extent, to that extent, the action that you're taking is not a moral action. Because you've considered your own well-being. So to the extent that there's an element of self-interest, it makes it an immoral action, right? So, you know, if people really thought about it, if people really thought that was what morality was, then I think there would be a lot more guilt and a lot more confusion and a lot more among the population. The thing is, most people don't think. Most people don't think about morality. They don't make it explicit. They know that they have more responsibilities to help other people, but they don't think of it as an absolute. They don't think about it as something that dominates everything that they do in their life. They also think they should help themselves. They also think they should be happy. Look at all the self-help manuals. Look at all the self-help books that sell. They also think they should make money. They also try to enjoy their jobs, or many of them try to enjoy their jobs. And they're constantly torn. So they know they're doing that, but they also have to help their neighbors. So they go out and they do community service and they give a lot of money to charity. And when the vote comes to vote for higher taxes, they vote for higher taxes. And every time I give a talk, they ask what about the poor because they're really concerned about the poor. Not really, but because they know they're supposed to be concerned about the poor. So they have this, you know, they haven't thought philosophically about this, you know, luckily for them. Because if they thought philosophically about this and they committed themselves to altruism, they'd be dead. They certainly wouldn't be living a good life. But if you look around, the people around you, the Christians around you, the religious people around you, just the ordinary people around you who, if you talk to them and ask them about morality, they would go, oh selfishness, that's bad, self-interest is bad. Oh, yeah, well, you got to take care of yourself to some extent. You know, happiness, being happy is good, but you know, but your moral obligation to other people and they live this contradiction inside of themselves. They have no one standard. Sometimes the standard is their own life. Sometimes the standard is other people. Sometimes they're moving, as a previous caller mentioned, sometimes they're moving towards life. And other times they're moving towards death and hopefully overall they're moving more towards life than they are towards death. And I think for the most part, most Americans and most people in free countries do that. But they're not doing it because they have an ideology, you know, they're doing that because they just don't want to die. They don't want to sacrifice. They don't want to suffer. You know, pleasure is good. They sense it. So it's all implicit, but it's easy to convince them then, and this is what the status do. It's easy to convince them then that they're selfish bastards, that they're really bad people. They only think about themselves. That as a consequence of that, they need to hire the state to compensate for their lack of altruism. Many of them feel immense guilt. Those who don't feel the guilt feel like they should feel guilty. So they behave as if they feel the guilt, which is interesting, right? So I don't know if Bill Gates actually feels guilty for being the richest man in the world. But I do think, without question, Bill Gates believes that he should feel guilty for being the richest man in the world. And therefore acts accordingly. So whether you feel the guilt, or whether you think you should feel the guilt. The result is very similar. That's kind of interesting. It's an interesting distinction between feeling I got that from Uncle Garte. I mentioned I never really thought about the fact that some of these people don't actually feel guilty. But they do know that they should feel guilty. And that causes them to act in certain ways. That causes them to act as if they felt guilty. So it's all very convoluted. But think about that as a life. And this is the beauty of objectivism. This is the beauty of making clear that you have a value. You have a supreme value. You have a standard for all your values. And that is your own life. That is your own survival. And ultimately your own flourishing. And the purpose of which all your values is your own happiness. And then you have a hierarchy of values. And this is what objectivism teaches us to do. And this is what you all should do. Is to create a hierarchy of values. Okay, my life. I need to survive. I want to thrive and flourish. I need to survive a core human being. Which means not just survive at the very basic level of just eating and drinking. But the level of fully utilize what it is that is a human being. Or what is that? That's fully utilizing my reasoning faculty. My fully being fully rational. And being fully at my full capacity. Both materially, physically and spiritually. This is partially the role of art. Is to allow us to experience that full flourishing in the spiritual realm. And this is why, you know, if you guys are objectivists and you don't invest in art. You don't invest in aesthetic. You don't invest in figuring out what you love. Figuring out and studying and opening yourself up to experience art. To experience, to aesthetic experiences. Then you're missing out on human flourishing. Art is an important fundamental part of that whole, which is to flourish. And therefore in your hierarchy of values, which you should all have a clear hierarchy of values in your mind. What's more important than what? What should I invest in? Then you're missing out. Then how do you decide? And art should be in that hierarchy of values and it should be fairly high up. Fairly high up. I go to museums whenever I travel. I try to go to concerts. I surround myself with beautiful things in my home. I surround myself with art in my home. You can't see it here on Facebook Live because this is just my son's bedroom. But if you go downstairs, every wall is plastered with artworks and sculptures all over the place. And I've got a great music system and I listen to a lot of music. So you've got to find ways to get that full experience of human flourishing. But as an objectivist, you know what the standard is, your own life. And then you have a clear hierarchy of values. And that should give you clarity in life. It should make choices relatively easy. What's higher, what's lower. Now this requires a lot of work, I always say. And I've said this on the show before and I've said it to a live audience. Being selfish is hard work. It's about thinking, thinking, thinking. What is more important than what? How do I create, how do I figure out what my higher care values is? And then how do I live it? How do I get the top values? How do I pursue the top values? How do I drive towards the top values? What kind of actions are necessary? What are the virtues, right? So I've got values. But then what are the virtues that I need to practice? And how do I practice them? And how do I stay consistent in practicing them? So all of this objectivism is hard to practice consistently. Being an egoist is hard to actualize consistently. You can automate it over time. So it becomes easy and easier as you grow older because you've automatized. You make second nature a lot of these kind of choices, a lot of this kind of thinking, a lot of this kind of evaluation. But it's hard originally. It's hard initially. And it takes years and years and maybe decades to automatize it. Why is the camera going to some arbitrary spot in my room? That's funny. But it gives you clarity. Now think about altruism. Most people out there live without that clarity. They don't have a hierarchy of values. They know that they're supposed to sacrifice for other people. They know they're supposed to give it to church and they have to do the community service and they've got to do these things. They don't have it clear how important that is relative to getting a new car, relative to getting a raise on your job, relative to enjoying their kids. They kind of wing it, constantly wing it. And they constantly, or many of them constantly feel guilt because they should be doing other things. Or as I said before, they don't feel guilt and then they wonder why they're not feeling guilt. Are they really bad people because they enjoy taking care of themselves, their own family and the people they love. And they're not spending a lot of time doing all the things that their preacher tells them they should be doing or spending a lot of time doing a lot of things that their mother told them to do when they were little kids or that their philosophy teacher taught them or that they read in Kant that they should be doing. So they have no direction. They drift and you see so many people out there, even very productive people, who other than their job, which they love and they can't give up and that's how our society grows. So I asked the question originally, how do we grow as an economy? How do people innovate? Because of this element of egoism, because of this element of love of life, because when we're kids, we realize that in order to be able to deal with reality, we have to be rational. So we adopt rationality, we adopt elements of rationality and we adopt rationality even without in spite sometimes of what we're being taught, right? Because it works because it's practical in reality. And all the stuff that we're taught is kind of back there and it's interfering and it stops us from fully exercising our rationality and it stops us from being fully engaged in the world and fully in the moment and fully appreciating our own value and the value of the things around us. And therefore we're constantly torn and so what you find is people are very good at their work, they love their work, they can't live without their work, they're incredibly rational at their work and then with everything else, they're irrational, they're erratic, they're emotional, they're inconsistent, they're not good, they're not happy, they're not successful. They don't apply the same principles that they applied at work. We've learned kind of at work, you're supposed to be rational. At work, you're supposed to follow what we study in business school, there's certain principles and there's certain ways in which you can be successful. But life, life, that's something different and life has this morality of altruism and yeah, at work you can't be altruistic because that's square everything up so we ignore it here. You know, it's what a mish-mash. I mean, I find it hard to imagine living that kind of life because I became an objectivist at a very young age so I never really experienced an adult living with this mish-mash of elements. Now, I have to say, it took me a long time to fully integrate objectivism so to some extent I always, I had that. I had the tug of collectivism or the tug of tribalism or the tug of altruism that was with me but I had also, by that point in time because I'd read Ayn Rand, I had the tools to self-correct. I had the tools to adjust. But how do people out there live? I mean, it's hard. I feel sorry for them. And notice how politicians take advantage of this. Not that they think they realize what they're doing because they realize that to appeal to the better nature, better in quotes, nature of people, you have to appeal to altruism. The appeal to altruism works because people respond to that so the politicians are encouraged to do that more and more even though they don't really know what they're doing. And of course, what is the politician striving towards? He's not really there to sacrifice for the people. He's there because of his own power lust. See, he's not an egoist but he's not an altruist either but he uses altruism in order to manipulate people which is the ultimate goal of altruism is an ideology, is the ability to manipulate people. It's a mess, right? And life is a mess and what you have is a mixed economy. I think Ayn Rand called this the mixed economy of the soul. It's a mixed economy of the soul. It's just like, if you look at our economy today, we have elements of capitalism. We have elements of freedom. We have elements where reason thrives. In the machine shop, when you're working on some new invention or some new tool and some new thing, it's you in reality and you solve the problem. And then later on, a regulator intervenes and says, oh no, you have to adjust this and you might make adjustments. I might not make adjustments but there's a complete mess. Some industries are more regulated, some are less but there's always this interchange of reason and rationality and production and self-interest and capitalism and profit motive with all the political redistribution of wealth and guilt and regulation and controls and manipulation. And when it tilts towards overwhelming regulation, control and redistribution, production stops. You get stagnation or depression. And when it tilts towards more freedom, you get some success economically. And it's the same in the human soul. If it tilts towards more dominance of the idea of I've got to sacrifice, I've got to give, I've got to stop being so selfish. I've got to stop being so focused on what's good for me. I have to stop pursuing my own values and focus on other people. Then it's unbelievably destructive to the soul. And when it tilts towards a little bit more of focusing on myself, I'm going to work hard, I'm going to do this, then you get some elements of happy and you can see people out there who have very, very mixed premises who are somewhat happy. They're happy to the extent that they are being selfish to the extent that they are being rational. It's just like an economy succeeds to the extent that it allows for freedom to the extent that there is capitalism. And it's depressing. And I think mental illness and depression and the prevalence of depression and the prevalence of mental illness and all these things is the logic standard consequence. Well, I don't know the logic standard. I'm not a doctor so I need to be careful, but it strikes me as to the logic standard consequence of altruism. Altruism screws up your soul. It messes up your ability to enjoy life. Of course you're going to be depressed. You have no higher key values. You don't know what to do. You don't know what's right and what's wrong and what's not better. By what standard is it? Is the standard what my mother wants? Is the standard what I want? Is the standard what my kids want? Is the standard what my boss wants? Or what the poor people in Africa, maybe I should just go to Africa and give it all up and help them. Maybe that's what is good, but then will that make me happy? Is happiness really the standard? Should I be happy? Should I be happy? I mean, we're just scraping the surface of the kind of confusion that altruism creates in the soul of a human being. And I would be depressed. Wouldn't you be depressed? If that was going on, it said your mind constantly. And of course you have to quieten it. You have to repress it. So people are repressed. And think about people's attitude towards... I don't know. Somebody wanted me to talk about sex on the show. So think about people's attitude towards sex. Right? Oh, it's fun. It's really, really enjoyable. But, you know, the standard can be fun. It can be pleasure. And you know, there's a sin there and, you know, it really is. It's a bodily pleasure. It's not spiritual. What about the spirit? And what about what God says about sex? And what the preacher said about sex? And, you know, and love loves, you know, but that's pretty self-interested too. And shouldn't I love Jesus more than I love my wife? And, you know, and surprise, surprise, Americans are unbelievably sexually repressed. They can't talk about it. They can't think about it. You know, so they need pornography and they need strip clubs and they need all this other stuff in order to relieve themselves in a way that, I don't know, how they psychologically kind of cleanse themselves, if you will, from it. But they have this completely confused, completely mixed up, completely upside down vision of what sex is and what an attitude, a healthy attitude to what sex should be because they can't trust pleasure. They can't trust feeling good. They can't trust, you know, the spiritual fun of sex and the material fun of sex, the spiritual and the physical. They can't trust it because it's fun. It's good. It's positive. So what do you do with it? So, I mean, altruism creates in the world we live in unbelievable amounts of misery, depression, anxiety, stress, all the things that supposedly typify modern society and all the reasons people buy a million self-help books is, in my view, caused by the unbelievable confusion that altruism creates. Now, can they hold that altruism? It's still being incredibly productive, sure, because they're compartmentalizing their altruism. You know, I'll make a lot of money then I'll give it away. But that means they're not fully enjoying the making a lot of money. They're not fully enjoying the process of making a lot of money. They're not fully enjoying the fact that they have a lot of money. You know, people tell me, I hear this a lot, that they admire Juan Buffett because even though he's like the second richest man in America, he still drives an old Cadillac and he still lives in his old home. Isn't that cute? Isn't that quaint? And I go, no, that's horrible. I mean, if I was the second richest man in the world to design me the most fabulous house possible, which would be automated and voice recognition and I could do so many fun stuff and I would drive a Ferrari. I would love to drive a Ferrari or whatever, right? What's money for if not to help you pursue more values? Now, the fact that Juan Buffett doesn't in his personal life, right? He pursues it in his work life. He buys other companies and invests a lot of thought in that. And I admire him in his work life, but in his in his personal life, he invests nothing in his own happiness, if you will. Right? And now, let me read to somebody who's posted something interesting. See the value. But I also see the value. Somebody say I found myself agreeing with you a lot. I do see the value in self interest, but I also see the value in altruism. I have found joy and fulfillment from both. Yes, altruism can cause poor results, but it also can cause much joy and happiness that has brought me in my own life. What do you say to those who find joy and fulfillment in altruism? Okay, I'm going to get to that. Good question. You know, if he's so rich, why isn't he investing in his own personal happiness? There's got to be stuff that he enjoys. And if he doesn't, he should cultivate that enjoyment. Like cultivate your enjoyment of art. Cultivate your enjoyment of what do you call it? Architecture. Somebody who owned my Ferrari would drive itself. Not mine. The whole point of having a Ferrari is driving it. I want to be fully in control of that beast. That would be so much fun. But you know, you got to cultivate your own values. And this is true of all of you. And some of you work too much. Yeah, you can't. That is possible for an egoistic person. And you don't think about your personal values, your relationships, your friendships, your romantic relationships, sex, art, driving. You've got to think about what do I really value? And if you find yourself saying, I don't know. I don't know what I really value. Or you find yourself going, I don't think I value anything. Then go find something to value. And experiment and test and check and push yourself and learn, learn about art, learn about aesthetics, learn about things so that you can build yourself things that you value. Because otherwise life is dull. And it can't be one-dimensional. And I talked about this in a previous show that when we talked about productiveness just working is not enough. You need love. You need the love of fill in the blank. Other people. Art. You need to love things. People. Stuff. All right. So, if you have any questions on anything I've said, give me a call. 347-324-3075. 347-324-3075. Give me a call with questions on anything I've said. I've got a few questions on new topics so I'll have to do a whole different show. Just open question, open mic thing. Because I want to get this thing about getting pleasure from altruism. And here you have to again go back to definitions. What is altruism? Altruism is the idea placing the world being of others before oneself. Your moral purpose in life under altruism is other people. And doing it with the explicit goal of negating oneself. It's not it's again, as I said the con said, right, if you think you're going to get pleasure out of helping somebody and you have to think about why am I getting the pleasure, then it's not completely altruistic because it's partially motivated by the pleasure and therefore con and everything con would say it doesn't count as being moral. So let's be careful on how we use altruism. I'm curious the question disappeared because my Facebook live only gets like four comments at a time. I don't see them all. But I can't remember his name so I apologize. But think about this. Was it altruistic? That is, I don't consider helping other people altruism. I help other people all the time because I enjoy the company. They're friends of mine. I might love them. They might just be somebody that it's easy for me to help and it doesn't cause me trouble and it doesn't cost me too much. And they're a human being and I value human beings. But it's always done within the context of my life. How much time do I have? How much money do I have? Is this a bad person? Do I know them to be bad? I don't help them. Is this a good person? Do I know them to the good? Yes, and I do help them. Do I love them? Oh, yeah, I definitely want to help them because love is such a huge value. People you love is so rare and so important and huge value. So in the context of your life and the context of all your values and the context of the higher key of value that you have then yeah, helping other people is cool. But that's an altruism. I help them because it's in pursuit of my values. Helping them is part of my pursuit of my values. Altruism is the negation of your own values. It's I have a higher key of values and I'm choosing to avoid a higher key in order to pursue a lower value because that's what is demanded of me. That's what duty requires. So if you ask the question if you commented that altruism makes you feel good or you get joy and pleasure out of it. My question is why are you getting joy and pleasure out of it rationally because the people you're helping are good people because the people you're helping are people that add to your life because they're human beings and there's value in human beings and they feel you want to help them and it didn't cost you that much and you didn't have to sacrifice anything for it you didn't have to give up a higher value for it. Are you really being altruistic? Are you really negating yourself placing their interest as primary and giving all of yourself to them without getting anything in return? And I'd be surprised if it was the second and it's probably the first. Most of us are benevolent most of us like other people most of us see value in other people in a higher key value other people are there our loved ones are very high up our friends are still quite high up but even our neighbors are there because they're good people they're basically good people and one wants to help good people if it doesn't cost you that much if it's not that hard there's immense value in good people producing and creating and being successful and if you can help them be that then your life is better for it. So again altruism the way it's used today is such a wishy washy concept because anytime I stop and help somebody that's altruism no it's not altruistic it's not altruistic to share the ball in basketball that one drives me nut it's not selfless to pass the ball and not take the shot if by passing the ball you increase the probability of winning the goal is winning the goal is not beefing up your personal statistics the goal of life is to flourish it's not to die with a lot of money so if I can give some money to somebody who is going to be productive who that money is really going to help and I'm going to get a lot of pleasure watching them and I'm going to get a lot of pleasure from their success then what does it help me to die with a little bit more money so again what is altruism when you say I do altruistic act and it makes me feel good what does that mean what is doing altruistic acts actually mean I'm curious I'm curious how you hold it in your mind all right questions on anything we've talked about so now the silence you see the only way I get answers you guys the only way I get phone calls is I guess if I ask a very specific question as a quiz in a sense and then I get answers but if I just say just ask me a question about anything I've talked about silence nothing the phones don't ring by the way when you call in to flubbish what the hell is flubbish mean I don't know what flubbish means yeah David call 347-324-3075 David Motola I guess 347-324-3075 I'm interested I just said the number hopefully you have it you're listening right so we have to hold these concepts clearly in our minds now I think what most people do and I think to some extent my guess is David does as well is there's a certain there's a certain fuzziness to what they view as egoism they don't take that fully seriously and the sudden fuzziness to what they do in altruism and there isn't a clear hierarchy of values so they do things out of what they think is altruism it gives them pleasure but they don't have they don't measure it against something that might have given them even more pleasure might have given them even more satisfaction there's no clear hierarchy of values there's no clear rational thought being given to how you live your life and how to pursue your values and that's the revolution that is Iron Man that's the revolution that is Objectivism I don't know why Blocktalk Radio should block you from anything anyway let me know if you're really having radio problems what do you call it send me an email or something if you're having real problems so Objectivism gives you these amazing tools by the way David what's your area code so I know when it's you calling just on facebook live just give me your area code so I know which one of these callers is you I've got 906 I've got 610 and maybe I just got 801 but I'm not sure which one of those are you Objectivism gives you a clear hierarchy in which other people are part of the hierarchy but then you know that when you're helping some other person you know why you're doing it you know why they're doing it so to ask a question or to make me know that you want to say something you have to press 1 I think you have to dial the number then press 1 and that puts a question mark next to your next to your number in my thing there you go good job hey David how's it going hey great how are you doing good thanks for participating I really appreciate it a few years ago and I was always fascinated by your debate with Mark Scalvin yeah that was a fun debate although it was fun although it wasn't very deep have you read have you read on your end not I wouldn't have read through any of her books completely but I am very libertarian and so I understand the concept I would say fairly well but I haven't read through anything substantially I would definitely recommend her essay on the Objectivist Ethics in the Virtue of Selfishness so I would definitely try to try that it's one essay it's not a short essay but it's an essay that really goes deep into this question of egoism but go ahead you want to challenge me on the altruism thing yeah so well it's more like I'm trying so I definitely see the value of self-interest and I don't see anything wrong and I understand your talking points when it comes to the value of selfishness and how that progresses society along and how that's not a virtue of advice I completely agree with that I loved during the debate how you talked about there's a difference between selfishness and stupidity and they often get intertwined but where I struggle with when it comes to altruism and maybe I'm confusing the definition of it but I'll give you an example so I was raised in Christianity I'm still a Christian so I know that that's a very huge component of our faith is sacrificed and you view that more or less as detrimental but I can think of experiences in my own life where certain things that have been asked of me to do that I wasn't initially excited about and I didn't want to do and didn't find joy or fulfillment at that time but sometime later in life where there was an experience or something that happened during it that actually ended up adding value and I could go back to it at another point in my life and find it that was a value and the thing that I did that I didn't find value or joy in at the time and so I find like when I messaged you I said hey there's certain altruistic ask and maybe that's not altruism but I do find joy and value for them it might be altruism but I ultimately find joy and value I can think of a lot of experiences in my life where I did stuff that I wish I hadn't done or I wish I hadn't been forced to do in some cases forced to do and good things came out of it because I would look out for good things and I always try to make the best of a situation and you can make good things out of all kinds of garbage and my best example of that is is kind of altruistic but it's in a sense of forced altruism is serving in the military I was conscripted I was part of a draft I had to do three years of military service which I hated, I didn't want to do it was for the most part brain numbing because you don't use your mind very much in the army even though I was in military intelligence intelligence is not very highly valued even in military intelligence and so you don't use your mind you're treated like a number it's just not fun it's not a pleasant experience but can I say that I got nothing good out of it absolutely not I got tons of stuff good out of it one I met my wife in the army so that's a huge amount of bullets and good that came out of that but second I did things in the army that I would have never done anywhere else and as a consequence I think it helped me gain self-esteem and add it to my life experience and I can say things about the Middle East I couldn't say otherwise because I actually lived it and served in and blew stuff up and analyzed intelligence so I benefited from that but if I had to go do it all over again I still am against forcing me to spend three years in the environment even though I squeezed good stuff out of it so net did I get more good I don't know I don't even know how to completely net that out of force so that wasn't voluntarily so let's take a voluntary thing let me go there are a lot of things you do like going to the dentist which are in your self-interest but unpleasant studying math for some people some periods in life I hated some periods in life I loved it but math is unpleasant but it's good for you and years later you might discover that that calculus yeah it's good that I studied it because it really sharpened my thinking or here I am with this problem and actually use it or whatever but I hated it when I did so just because you hate something when you do it or just because you don't realize the full value of something when you do it doesn't mean it's not in your self-interest but so so let's take something you did voluntarily and then years later you found that it gave you some joy or some benefit it still doesn't mean for example that if you had done something different with your time and energy you would have got even more joy and happiness out of it so what what objectivism argues is and it's not that selfishness is okay what objectivism argues is that the only thing that gives value meaning the only thing that gives value meaning is your life your life the choice you make to live is what then brings up the question okay well how should I live what should I do in order to live what does my life require me to do and the things that are necessary for you to live the things that drive your survival and your flourishing and your success and your living are your values so value divorced of you know the purpose which is life the standard which is your life and that's an egoistic standard that is selfish standard you know they lose all meaning so so you have this almost negative view of sacrifice because my view is that a sacrifice is that part of your values are motivated by death by death so if I think of my if it's truly a sacrifice because if I think of what a value is values are structured in my hierarchy of values towards making my life better towards making my life spiritually and materially more fulfilling in this world and let's put the afterlife aside right in this world everything is driven towards that and that might sometimes require me to do something that's painful today like invest or like pass the ball or like go to the dentist or like study math or something like that but I'm willing to take the pain right now because I know there's a benefit in the long run that's not a sacrifice I call that an investment sacrifice says that I am consciously to negate a value to negate something that would move me towards life and by negating that value in a sense what I'm implicitly accepting is a movement towards death a movement away from life so I believe I see sacrifices evil because I see sacrifices moving me towards death and I don't want to die and I I structure my whole life in order to make my life successful but people use the word sacrifice wrongly in my view and I think you might be right there I just have a quick question let's take something basic so for example I'm laying on the couch watching TV watching Simpsons reruns and I get offered to go help out at the food bank at the food pantry I really don't want to go I'd rather watch TV but the reality is if I stay there watching TV it doesn't enrich my life at all but it's not a preference of mine so I end up going and helping out I would consider that a sacrifice it's not something I want to do but it does add value to other people would you consider that a sacrifice? well it depends so here's the thing you sits on the trigger something and it's rushed out of my mind as they started talking so you're sitting on the sofa watching reruns of the Simpsons not exactly a high value in your life not exactly something that you really committed to oh I know what it was being self-interested does not mean pursuing your preferences in the economist sense in the libertarian sense your preferences mean your emotions your whims that's what preferences are I feel like watching the Simpsons but the question that an objectivist asks himself the question that a selfish person asks himself is this good for me is this helping me pursue my life now sometimes watching the Simpsons I can say this is good for me because you know what part of life is relaxation I need to relax so that I can be productive tomorrow and as a consequence of that I need like a half an hour a brain numbing television so that I can do something more productive later on and that's fine but that's a conscious decision that I make but if I'm just vegging and I'm vegging because you know what I just feel like vegging and I haven't thought about it and I know I should be doing something else and I know the things that are more important than the vegging right now and I really don't need to vege right now that's not selfish that's you know self-destructive it was that point that you made about being stupid right I believe there are three options in life you can be altruistic which means live for the sake of other people which I think is suicide you can be selfish in the productive sense in the rational sense or you can be self-destructive which means you can do whatever you feel like doing you follow your whims you cannot think about what's really in your self-interest that's what like Bernie Madoff would be self-destructive so if you think how do you distinguish you know somebody else it's hard to distinguish so first it's hard to distinguish it's hard for me to say that person is sacrificing that person actually gets some rational pleasure out of going to food bank now this is my point about the food bank versus vegging two pretty bleak alternatives I think I think there's probably a third thing you could be doing with your time that's better than either one of those two but it could be that you know helping other people is not a negative necessarily and it could be that you do actually get something out of being at the food bank and I would not get any pleasure out of it and I would never go to the food bank and help and I have no interest in doing that you know maybe I would in a more rational world in which I thought that the people in the food bank were almost all people who really down on their luck that it's not their fault or if the food bank was just people in my neighborhood a hurricane had just gone through and they really for no fault of their own the destitute right now and I'd be happy to help them but I think now you're not going to find me at that would be a sacrifice for me so my question is in your rational hierarchy of values is a food bank can you articulate to yourself you don't have to do it to me why being at the food bank independent of duty, independent of Jesus Christ independent of Christianity in reality based on the values as you see them can you articulate why it's in your self interest and if it is then I say it's not a sacrifice what most people do is they go to the food bank out of a sense of guilt and they by reducing the guilt they feel good about themselves but that to me is false because the guilt was unearned to begin with or they do it out of a sense of duty and again they feel good because they've done their duty but it's not a real feel good it's not it's not something that lasts so again I think it's very difficult from the outside to judge somebody else in terms of their motivations right okay that makes okay sure and I think you'd benefit and I think you'd enjoy reading because you're thinking about these issues reading the first essay in The Virtue of selfishness by Inran it's actually online for free on the inran.org slash campus look for the objective aesthetics okay slash campus objective aesthetics sure anytime thanks for calling alright we got two more callers suddenly woken up alright hey you're in the inran book show who's this this is scala how are you doing hey scala I'm good I'm running overtime just for you go for it man I'm doing well sir good what's up my question is in regard to the objective point of Jesus of Nazareth I know that Inran had spoken about in the Christian viewpoint of him being the ideal so what is it in the objective of this view should we see Jesus of Nazareth I mean Jesus in my view as a mythical figure as the story tells it is the exact opposite you know it's the opposite of a hero right I mean he's the ultimate villain and he represents a villainous idea the idea that he suffers the most brutal horrible painful death possible for something he didn't do for something we did that idea in of itself is one of the most evil ideas I can think of so to have the injustice now people say well he didn't suffer because he's the son of God well but then the story doesn't mean anything the whole point of the story is that he suffers that God is willing to sacrifice his son how God can have a son is a whole different other question but anyway that God is willing to sacrifice his own son to put him through the worst torture and misery and pain and horror not for something the son did for something everybody else did I can't think of anything more despicable than that right I mean imagine as a parent doing that with your son right it's it truly is you know it's mind boggling to me that people admire Jesus right or admire God for doing this to his son I mean if there really is a God a son I would hate this God what a horrible thing to do now remember this is the same God that asked Abraham to kill his son right so this is not a particularly nice God to begin with but I don't get this that's true sacrifice dying and suffering and being in pain I mean I don't know if you've ever read about being crucified but you can't think of a more horrific way of dying not because you did anything but because other people did something that's the ultimate sacrifice that is the ultimate evil that's the ultimate horrific that's the ultimate injustice impossible you should only suffer for your own sins not for somebody else's sins so alright now I've just alienated all my religious and it's not like Jesus was then happy because he died, death has to have a meaning it has to mean something that you die so you don't exist anymore so you can't be happy anymore so that's the point of the sacrifice the point is that you gave everything up for the sake of giving it up not for the sake of some happiness you can't say well I sacrificed in this world so I'd be happy in the next world then you're just being an egoist in a mystical way but you can't do that you can't introduce mysticism into the equation and if Jesus, the whole point is he suffered if you say he didn't suffer because he's God then it takes it eliminates it eliminates the point of the story because the point of the story is the suffering and this is why I often say in my talks have you ever seen a painting of a happy saint a happy saint? no, they're usually full of arrows full of arrows suffering the most horrible death upside down on a cross upside down on a cross for something they didn't do or for standing up for some principle but what makes them heroic what makes them saints is not the standing up for principle it's their suffering it's their death it's a destruction of their life it's the fact that they committed what's called the ultimate sacrifice and the ultimate sacrifice is what? it's dying particularly if you can die in pain that increases your odds of becoming a saint dramatically that's just the worship of pain the worship of destruction the worship of death is evil and unfortunately there's a strong element of that in Christianity what makes Christianity destructive that's not everything in Christianity if that was everything in Christianity Christianity would have disappeared off the face of it they have to be from positives in Christianity that makes it viable but if that was all that was in Christianity wouldn't have survived because human beings are not that evil so there are positives in Christianity redemption and the possibility of redemption and the possibility of individual redemption and so on there's a whole philosophy of religion but those ideas are evil ideas and they're in our culture, they're everywhere and they're all around us luckily nobody takes them seriously not fully with a few exceptions most people don't unfortunately they don't take them seriously, they don't take anything seriously and they don't know what the alternative is it allows people in power, people who are vicious people who are evil, people who are manipulative people who are power lusters to use altruism, to use their guilt to use morality to manipulate them and to give us the kind of mixed economy of the soul and mixed economy of economics and mixed economy of politics that we live in and that we all suffer too alright Scala, I'm running out of time so thanks for calling we're going to take one more call and then I'm going to have to call it a day who's this? hey, how's it going? go ahead sacrifice people just don't understand proper definitions I think one of the best examples of how people mistakenly believe sacrifice is a positive is you watch a sporting activity like the ellipsoid like that and they talk about how much these athletes sacrifice to attain they don't go out and get drunk and do parties and they study really hard in schools and stay in athletically eligible and then they get really early in the morning and they work out and after school instead of hanging out and shopping they're working out and doing everything that they can to obtain this and they call that a sacrifice and that's not a sacrifice because you're working towards something your actual value which is getting that gold medal and so people have this mis-definition of sacrifice because they call it what they're doing a sacrifice would actually what they're doing is working towards an achievement I agree with you completely I think again altruism purposefully confuses these concepts because if people realize what they were really after they would rebel because people are not that evil they're not on the death premise they're not death worshipers most people are not most people are basically good and so they have to make these concepts wishy-washy and vague and not specific and sports is a great example of that the fact that he sacrificed by passing the ball and didn't take the shot itself the fact that he sacrificed all the hard work in order to become a super successful athlete those are not sacrifices nobody tells me when I when I don't buy the Ferrari I could take all my savings out and buy a Ferrari but I choose not to buy a Ferrari instead I put the money away and I invest it for the future nobody says that you know you could say he's sacrificing but it's the same thing I'm investing and what those athletes are doing investing in their own future what you do when you study math even though you hate math is investing in your future what you do when you go to the dentist even though it's painful and you hate it is investing in the future it's not the fact that you're willing to give up something today for the sake of something greater in the future that is not a sacrifice that is an investment and maybe there's a better way than investment to illustrate that I'm open to suggestions but you're absolutely right sports is a great illustration of that and how people getting completely wrong they don't mean it is a sacrifice in the same way and and this is the this is the thing about again about about Jesus people are uncomfortable with the idea that he died and he suffered so then they come up oh no he rose again he came back to life he didn't suffer he wasn't that bad don't worry about it everything's okay because they don't want the suffering and the death to actually be there because because then people again would reject Christianity they want to give you an out they want to give you an escape patch this is why you know Christians you know different from the Jews the Christians say yes suffer in this life sacrifice in this life all that but it's an investment there's an afterlife and you'll do great in the afterlife really I mean that's completely arbitrary that's complete nonsense but it's a way again to manipulate you and it's a way for you to still have some sense of self and some sense of wanting pleasure and success and prosperity and still sacrifice and and lose everything in this life so in Judaism Judaism is much more honest in that sense Jesus says you get you get it here you don't get it here this is the life you have and when Job rebels against that God says don't question me shut up and suffer and and that's Judaism is much more honest in that respect but Christianity no Christianity has to create a story that again hides and hides the real meaning of what's going on so that people don't completely fully integrate what they're being asked of so Judaism is healthier because it doesn't have original sin it doesn't require suffering in this life the way Christianity does but it also is more honest in the sense that it doesn't create the afterlife as a kind of escape as a kind of an escape Christianity had to develop an afterlife and this is why Christianity in my view is so much more successful than Judaism because it gives people an escape it gives people a way out you know from this horrible life exactly all right it turns out we've got one more call I'm gonna you know I shouldn't let me take this and then I really do have to and thanks thanks for calling good point hi you're new on book show who's this hey Mr. Brooke what are you thinking so you're listening to me you know exactly what's going on what are you thinking I'm thinking I'm thinking this you know like the perspective that we have with life that's going on right now I mean the other day my wife came home and she told me she got a raise at work and was making more money than me and I couldn't stand it you know what I did I picked up that fucking cooler and I smashed over a stupid fucking face and I told her that too makes somebody around here because I'm the fucking man not you bitch you understand what I'm saying and I told her because I'm a man and I'll smash over a stupid fucking well that's pretty rational and stupid if you ask me and really really self-destructive thanks for calling I guess I'm not sure what that was about but but that's just self-destructive that's just stupid that has nothing to do with interest and if you can't handle the fact that your wife makes more money than you then you're not a man you're a you know I'm not gonna say it I'm not gonna say it online that is absurd alright you've been listening to your own book show this is about living objectivism hopefully you enjoyed our discussion about altruism today and I'll be back pretty regularly I think starting next week not traveling too much I think the next show will probably be Monday and stay tuned of course don't forget that on Sunday Sunday I'm on the blaze so you can look at the last show I think this time we're gonna talk about the immorality of minimal ways the immorality of social security in medica it should be interesting because a lot of the listeners are probably on medica and so listen on the blaze on Sunday at 11 o'clock pacific time 11 o'clock a.m. pacific time also please please please share these shows you know share them like them but particularly share them likes don't matter that much in the algorithms of the world out there in Twitter and Facebook and all these things you have to retweet you have to share you have to put them out into your networks that's how this show grows you guys are responsible for whether this show grows and whether it's a success and the 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